419 Million Facebook User Phone Numbers Found Online

[engine]

A database of 419 million phone numbers linked to Facebook accounts were found on an unsecured server.

According to Facebook, the numbers were scraped before Facebook cut of access to user number.

The data has now been taken down, but, of course, nobody knows how many times it was cloned.

Facebook was rather glib over the data saying it's old data.

“This data set is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers,” the spokesperson said. “The data set has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised.”

Bearing in mind how important phone numbers are becoming, it's not good that it was possible to scrape the data at all, imho.
[techcrunch.com...]

[sem4u]

This is disgraceful really. Why were all these phone numbers on a server with no password protection?

"This data set is old..." Hmmm...so is my phone number...in fact it is older than my Facebook account. Luckily, I have never put my number on Facebook (for a few good reasons).

[engine]

Why were all these phone numbers on a server with no password protection?

Someone scraped them and, it appears, left them there.
I can't believe it was FB that did that, but FB allowed the data to be scraped.

[DixonJones]

Ouch. Be careful if you get phone calls saying "Your FB account amy have been compromised, please click on this link to protect yourself..."

[engine]

I'm sure the calls will start and it'll happen for many years.
Sadly, I think there will people caught out by this.

One other hack from 2013, not FB, had one of my numbers on it, and to this day I'm still getting phone scammers referring to that company. I doubt they will stop.

[tangor]

So much for phone number for login verification ... (which I would never do in the first place!)

[tangor]

the only reason any website wants a phone number is to NAIL the identity of the user ...

This suggests the need for burner phones. :)