Sensitive Information Of 50 Crore Facebook Users Being Sold Via Telegram Bot! Indians Impacted?

A report has made some startling revelations – 500 million Facebook users’ cell phone numbers have been put up for sale by a Telegram bot.

This number includes 6 lakh users from India too.

Read on to find out all the details!

Contact Information Of 500 Million FB Users Leaked Through Telegram Bot

As per a report by Motherboard, cell phone numbers of 500 million Facebook users were put up for sale through a Telegram bot. A security researcher Alon Gal has stated that this data includes 6 lakh users from India. 

As per Gal, there is a user who runs the bot and uses the same to exploit a vulnerability in Facebook. This vulnerability, which was first reported in 2020 and was fixed as well, enabled anyone to access phone numbers that were linked to every Facebook account throughout the globe. This vulnerability was used to make a database of Facebook user accounts and their mobile phone numbers. This database is now reportedly being sold through the bot.

As per reports, the data provided by the Telegram bot is from 2019. The security researcher has stated that users affected by this are from more than 100 countries. Also, more than 6,162,450 users from India have been impacted by this. 

As people don’t update their phone numbers every year, it is quite likely that the information being sold is accurate.

Telegram Bot Selling Facebook ID’s For $5000?

As per the Motherboard report, if someone has another person’s phone number, they can find their Facebook user-ID with the help of the Telegram bot. The report states that the Telegram bot is selling a phone number or Facebook ID for $20, which is about Rs 1,460 in India. 

The bot is also selling Facebook users’ data in bulk. The bot reportedly charges $5,000, which is around Rs 3,65,160 for 10,000 credits. 

Gal has also stated that this is a serious privacy concern and that the issue was highly misreported when it first came to light. And now, the privacy concern has become much more concerning. 

He has told Motherboard that this data can be used for  “smishing and other fraudulent activities by bad actors.” 

Facebook should also notify the users of this problem, as per Gal.