Facebook user data of more than 533 million users from over 100 countries around the world, including Bangladesh, has been leaked online.
Out of the total data leaked, 3.8 million users were Bangladeshi. A user in a hacking forum published the data online on Saturday.
The exposed data includes personal information from Facebook users in 106 countries, including over 32 million records from users in the US, 11 million users in the UK, and 6 million users in India, according to the Indian Express.
The data includes phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.
According to a report in the Indian Express, data from 550,000 Facebook users in Afghanistan, 1.2 million in Australia, 3.8 million in Bangladesh, 8 million in Brazil and 6.1 million in India has allegedly been leaked.
US news media outlet Business Insider verified the news that the Facebook user information leak is correct. Leaked information has also been verified by some users.
Facebook authorities have also confirmed the leak. A spokesperson for the company said the information was leaked through a vulnerability, previously fixed by Facebook in 2019. Users can be at risk through this leaked information even if it is a few years old.
Earlier in 2016, Facebook vowed to eliminate mass data scraping after Cambridge Analytica scraped data from 80 million users, violating Facebook’s terms of service during the 2016 elections.
Meanwhile, the Facebook authorities, issuing a press release on Monday, said they found and fixed the problem in 2019.
"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," said a spokesperson of Facebook.