Egypt, Italy and the United States are the countries with the highest number of users affected by the data leak of 533 million Facebook profiles which returned to the fore a few days ago and for which the Italian Privacy Guarantor has opened an investigation. To make an analysis the researchers of the Surfshark company. This is on average – they explain – five types of data per user and include phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, places, dates of birth, biographies and some email addresses. Specifically, according to the analysis, the data of 44,833,547 Egyptian users, 35,677,377 Italians, 32,315,282 Americans and 28,804,686 Saudis were leaked. In the UK, 11,522,327 people are affected. The other countries most affected are France, Turkey, Morocco, Colombia, Iraq and South Africa. The specifics of what exactly leaked from this data leak varies from victim to victim. For example, the researchers explain, only for 4.76% of the profiles there was an exposure of the email address, instead for as much as 89.01% of their mobile number.
Surfshark’s analysis found that the dataset also allows you to match names and phone numbers with location data (exposed in 60.58% of cases) and employer names (exposed in 18.3% of cases). cases), putting people at risk of ‘spear phishing’, practicing scams. “This is an invitation to users to be more cautious. Be it text messages, e-mails or other means from which messages are received, always check the sender, links and attached files, grammatical errors, the tone of urgency and offers that are too good to be true, “Surfshark researcher Goddy Ray explains. The Facebook data leak dates back to 2019, the database went up for sale about two months ago and a few days ago it was back available online, but for free. The Privacy Guarantor has invited people to pay attention to anomalies on their mobile phones.