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According to The Record, Facebook is suing Ukrainian programmer Alexander Solonchenko for a large-scale data plagiarism incident. According to the report, Solonchenko used an automated tool to pretend to be an Android device, and used Facebook’s “input contact” function to feed millions of phone numbers to Facebook, and obtained phone numbers from them. The data of related users, the total number of users whose data has been obtained is as high as 178 million.
Solonchenko allegedly carried out data plagiarism between January 2018 and September 2019 (until Facebook turned off the “input contact” function), and it was sold on a black market forum starting in December 2020. Facebook found himself online after Solonchenko used his username and contact information on the black market forum elsewhere. In addition to plagiarizing Facebook information, Solonchenko also used other methods to plagiarize information from other entities, including a large Ukrainian bank.
In the complaint, Facebook requested an undetermined amount of compensation and requested that Solonchenko be prohibited from selling its plagiarized information. This is not the largest similar incident. In April, the personal information of 533 million users was leaked. It was also stolen in the same way at the time, so there is a high probability that the information is no longer a secret. It’s a bit sad to think about it this way.