The private personal data of 1.5 billion Facebook users is reportedly being sold on a popular hacking forum.
In late September, an announcement was posted on a hacking forum that claimed to have the name, email, phone number, location, gender, and user ID of 1.5 billion Facebook users. One prospective buyer has allegedly been quoted at $5,000 per 1 million Facebook accounts. This would value the entire set of Facebook user data at $7.5 million.
In a subsequent post, the seller alleges to represented a large company that works to scrape Facebook for data. The seller adds that the company has been in operation for at least four years and has over 18,000 clients.
In one post, the seller claims “We are legit company.”
Web Scraping is a process that uses bots to extract publically available content and data from websites. If the seller is to be believed, it means no accounts have been compromised. However, the seller utilizing a hacking forum to garner clients does little to ease fears that the 1.5 billion Facebook users, the company allegedly has data on, won’t suffer as a result. Dubious internet marketers and cybercriminals can now bid on these peoples’ personal data and do with it as they see fit.