Facebook Deletes Exposed User Records Stored On Amazon's Servers By Reuters

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc (NASDAQ 🙂 announced Wednesday it has removed public databases containing its user data on Amazon.com (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc.'s cloud servers after the UpGuard cybersecurity firm discovered millions of records exposed.

UpGuard's Cyber ​​Risk team announced Wednesday in a blog that Cultura Colectiva, an information site based in Mexico City, had used Amazon servers to store 540 million records of Facebook users, including phone numbers. identification, comments, reactions and account names.

Another database, from an application called At the Pool, lists the names, passwords, and email addresses of 22,000 people, said UpGuard.

Cultura Colectiva said in a statement that all his recordings on Facebook came from user interactions with his three pages on Facebook and that the same information was publicly available to anyone who browsed these pages.

"Neither sensitive data nor private data, such as e-mail or passwords, were among these because we do not have access to this type of data, so we did not endanger the confidentiality of the data. and the safety of our users, "said Cultura Colectiva. "We are aware of the potential uses of the data at the moment, so we have strengthened our security measures to protect the data and privacy of users of our Facebook fan pages."

Alex Capecelatro, who was CEO of At the Pool before closing around 2014, did not respond to requests for comment.

Facebook said in his statement that he was working with Amazon to remove the databases once alerted of the problem.

"Facebook's policies prohibit storing Facebook's information in a public database," the company said.

A number of privacy issues have hit Facebook, including a computer problem that exposed its employees' passwords to millions of registered users in a readable format within its internal systems.

Last year, the company was criticized as a result of revelations that Cambridge Analytica would have obtained personal data from profiles of millions of people on Facebook without their consent.

Facebook has subsequently announced changes to protect user data, including an audit of at least thousands of apps with the right to access Facebook user data.

Amazon has not responded to requests for comments. It has redoubled its efforts to educate customers about the risks associated with public storage of user data, after several of these data breaches have made headlines in recent years.