540 Million Facebook Users Personal Data Exposed to the Public Internet

Over 540 million Facebook users personal records that include comments, likes, reactions, account names, FB IDs exposed to the public Internet. All the data are collected and stored by Third-Party developers.

Researchers from UpGuard found third-party Facebook app datasets, one from Mexico-based media company Cultura Colectiva and another one belongs to Facebook-integrated app “At the Pool”.

Both of the app datasets found exposed to the public Internet through Amazon S3 bucket, that allows anyone to download the files.

Around 146 gigabytes of data that contains more than 540 million records exposed from the AWS server belongs to Cultura Colectiva, the exposed data contains comments, likes, reactions, account names, FB IDs and more.

The second server contains the backup of the Facebook-integrated app titled “At the Pool” exposed through the public Internet, the exposed database contains contained columns for fk_user_id, fb_user, fb_friends, fb_likes, fb_music, fb_movies, fb_books, fb_photos, fb_events, fb_groups, fb+checkins, fb_interests, password, and more.

Exposed passwords are the passwords used for At the Pool app, if you used the same password again, then you will be at risk. You prefer using password managers to get strong and unique passwords.

According to UpGuard “At the Pool” stores the passwords for 22,000 users in plain text, “the data sets vary in when they were last updated, the data points present, and the number of unique individuals in each.”

“But as these exposures show, the data genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Data about Facebook users has been spread far beyond the bounds of what Facebook can control today”, reads UpGuard blog post.

Upguard notified Cultura Colectiva and At the Pool, about the unsecured servers, but there is no response back from their end. Now the Facebook app dataset has been secured and taken offline after Upguard, Facebook and Bloomberg contacted Amazon.

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