Facebook won’t even tell you if your data was compromised in the massive breach

An old Facebook “hack” that impacted more than 533 million people resurfaced during the weekend, as reports revealed that the entire database was posted on a forum. Facebook quickly pointed out that the data breach is old, and the security vulnerability had been fixed, so similar accidents can’t happen. But it did little to address the fact that people with access to the database can obtain plenty of personal information about a user, including phone numbers. A few days later, a security researcher made it possible for potential victims to search the database and find out if their data was compromised. A different searcher showed how easy it would be for a malicious individual to harness that data by revealing that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook account was included in the hack, which included his phone number, and discovering that the Facebook CEO is a Signal user.

Despite that, Facebook doesn’t plan to notify impacted users. The company also insists in an explanation of what happened almost two years ago that the hackers did not breach Facebook’s defenses. Instead, they used a technology Facebook developed against itself to collect all that data in a “scraping” attack.