The phone numbers of 533 million Facebook users are currently being sold via a bot on encrypted messaging platform Telegram, according to Motherboard report. Moreover, the person selling the database full of Facebook users' phone numbers by $20 per number lets customers lookup those numbers by using an automated Telegram bot.
The Telegram bot has been running since at least January 12. As well as, the bot claims to contain information on users from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and 15 other countries. Meanwhile, the Facebook reported that the data relates to a vulnerability the company fixed in August 2019".
The security researcher who found the data breach Alon Gal explained that, its very worrying to see a database of that size being sold in cybercrime communities, it harms our privacy severely and will certainly be used for smishing and other fraudulent activities by bad actors.
Gal added: ''Using a Telegram bot enables a hacker to do two things in this scenario, they can find someone's phone number if they have that person's Facebook user ID, alternatively, if they have the person's user ID they can then find their phone number''.
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