Data of almost 80k Facebook users leaked

In 2019, Facebook experienced a significant data leak that affected 533 million users¹. Now, just a few years later, the social media platform has experienced another data leak, this time affecting nearly 80k of its users. The ramifications of this breach can be severe. Leaked email addresses and phone numbers can lead to crimes such as phishing or vishing, which are the most frequently reported types of cybercrime to the FBI².

Key insights

• In Facebook’s recent data leak, accounts from South Sudan were affected the most, with 28% (21.4k email addresses) exposed. India was the second most affected nation, accounting for 27% (20.9k) of the leaked email addresses, followed by the United States, which accounted for 13% (9.8k) of the total.
• The most frequently breached type of data alongside email addresses was profile pictures, with 79k leaked. Some profile pictures included copies of personal IDs with sensitive information such as personal numbers, dates, and places of birth. This kind of information can easily be misused to commit crimes like credit card fraud, potentially costing victims upwards of $10k each³.
• Languages were associated with nearly all exposed email addresses, along with names (97% of the email addresses were leaked with corresponding names), phone numbers (86%), and password hashes (39%).
• The ramifications of this breach are severe. Leaked email addresses and phone numbers can lead to crimes such as phishing or vishing, which are the most frequently reported types of cybercrime to the FBI³.

Methodology and sources

The data was collected by our independent partners from a publicly available database and aggregated by email addresses. This data was then anonymized and passed on to Surfshark’s researchers to perform a statistical analysis of their findings.

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