Several of Facebook's databases have been compromised, leaving 18 million records of UK users, 133 million US users, and more than 50 million Vietnamese users exposed, as reported by TechCrunch.
A server wasn't password-protected, according to a person who approached TechCrunch, meaning anyone had easy access. The information in the records was validated by TechCrunch, who also found users' gender, location, and name in the records.
Having to struggle with a bad reputation since the 2016 US election and the Cambridge Analytical scandal, where over 80 million FB users had their profiles picked clean for useful data on doubtful voters, Facebook was expected to take the protection of personal information more seriously.
Security researcher Sanyam Jain, who found the database in the first place, was even able to extract the phone number of several celebrities. As TechCrunch reached out to Facebook, their spokesperson Jay Nancarrow said:
"This data set is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people's ability to find others using their phone numbers"
"The data set has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised."
What do you make of all this?