Facebook hack exposes users phone numbers.
Or, the following could also be termed as –
Facebook’s Poor Privacy Settings Exposes Users Phone
Numbers.
Suriya shares his
experiences with Facebook Security – he found a vulnerability which can expose
{phone number: username} for a very large number of Facebook users. A query
such as
When 123456789 was replaced by a mobile phone number, it
exposed the corresponding username.
An automated script testing a large number of mobile phone
numbers would expose the corresponding usernames.
In spite of Suriya informing Facebook, they had no
rate-limits set to limit/block such automated queries.
He has posted a small subset of Facebook user’s phone
numbers (at the link below) to show that this was the case.
Most phone numbers posted are from India, New York.
His recommendation to Facebook users
So to protect yourself against this, change your settings to “My friends” and ask Facebook to provide an “Only me option” and make it such that it is the default setting for all users!
Meanwhile Facebook Security has some work to do.
Tags: facebook privacy issue, facebook phone number hack,
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