Bloomberg Law
Dec. 20, 2019, 11:00 PM

Data on Hundreds of Millions of U.S. Facebook Users Exposed

Alyza Sebenius
Alyza Sebenius
Bloomberg News
Andrew Martin
Bloomberg Editorial

Information on 267 million Facebook users, including user names, phone numbers and Facebook IDs, was exposed online, according to a cybersecurity researcher.

The data, mostly from U.S. Facebook users, was posted on a searchable database by a group that appeared to be based in Vietnam, said Bob Diachenko, the cyber threat intelligence director at Security Discovery, a Ukrainian cybersecurity website that offers news and consulting services. The Vietnamese group appeared to be charging for access to the data, but a flaw in their code inadvertently left the database open to all, he said.

A spokeswoman from Facebook Inc. said ...

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