Breaking: Data of 1.5B Facebook users on sale at Hacker Forum

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Amid global outage of Facebook along with its associated platforms, the data of its over 1.5 Billion users are now being sold in the dark web.

A report said the data are being sold on a Hacker Forum.

Sputnik News reported that 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 represent 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 with it as they see fit.

The news of 1.5 billion Facebook users’ personal data being for sale comes at a particularly troubling time.

It has been confirmed that Facebook and Instagram have been withdrawn from the global routing system of Domain Name System (DNS).

While at the same time, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp’s domain names have been listed for sale.

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went offline Monday evening, Nigerian time.

The Facebook Inc said it was working to restore the platforms.

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products.

“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience”, Facebook said on Twitter.

Instagram also issued an apology:

“Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it!”

WhatsApp couched its apology in similar words like Facebook:

“We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible.

“Thanks for your patience!’.

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