Security News > 2021 > April > Facebook attributes 533 million users' data leak to "scraping" not hacking
From the Facebook data samples seen by BleepingComputer, almost every user record had a mobile phone number, a Facebook ID, a name, and the member's gender associated with it.
Facebook has shed some light on the recent data leak comprising 533 million Facebook user profiles, data from which was posted on a hacker forum last week.
After reports of data leak emerged, an EU data regulator, the Data Protection Commission of Ireland began investigating the incident.
While Facebook attributes this data leak to web scraping, this usually involves collecting public information from websites.
Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who had first brought the data leak to light referred to the incident itself as an "Absolute negligence" of the users' data.
Facebook users can search data breach monitoring services like Have I Been Zucked? and Have I Been Pwned stepped up by their Facebook email address or linked phone number to find out if their data was impacted by this leak.
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