Details from over 500 million Facebook consumers have been discovered available on a site for hackers

NEW YORK — Details out of over 500 million Facebook consumers are discovered available on a site for hackers.

The data seems to be a few years old, however it’s just another illustration of the huge quantity of information accumulated by Facebook along with other social networking websites, and also the limitations to how protected that data is.

The access to the data collection was initially documented by Business Insider.

Facebook was grappling with information safety problems for several years. In 2018, the societal networking giant disabled a feature that allowed users to look for one another through telephone number after revelations that the governmental company Cambridge Analytica had obtained information on around 87 million Facebook users with no knowledge or permission.

Back in December 2019, a Ukrainian safety researcher reported discovering a database with the names, telephone numbers and one of a kind user IDs of over 267 million Facebook consumers — almost all U.S.-based — around the open net. It’s unclear if the present data dump is connected to the database.

“We discovered and fixed this problem in August 2019.”