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Facebook is under the microscope ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light and the social networking platform is trying to deal with every situation carefully. Adding to the world's largest social media network, which has over 2 billion users across the world, is another data breach targeting personal messages of thousands of users.
BBC has reported that hackers are claiming to have personal data to over 120 million Facebook account holders are willing to sell it for quick cash. Hackers published private Facebook messages of almost 81,000 users.
BBC was contacted by Facebook users and was able to confirm the leaked data was legit. The report stated that in addition to the 81,000 accounts, it was also made available and that it could not be used.
On further investigation, BBC Russian Service contacted five private users.
"One example included photographs of a recent holiday, another was about a recent Depeche Mode concert, and a third included complaints about his-in-law. There was also an intimate correspondence between two lovers, "BBC report noted.
The perpetrators behind the orchestrated attack on Facebook users are reportedly selling the data for as low as 10 cents per account. Affected users are largely based in Ukraine and Russia, but the extent of the attack also affects other countries, including Brazil, UK and the US.
For sale millions of account information has been taken, but the advertiser told BBC when it was approached that a hacker group could deliver data from 120 million accounts. However, the cyber-security company Digital shadows that the data for BBC was skeptical.
In fact, unlike previous times, Facebook is not blamed for the data breach. The company told the paper that its systems were not compromised.
"We have contacted browser-makers to know their website," Facebook executive Guy Rosen said in a statement. "We have also contacted the law and have been working with local authorities to remove information from Facebook."
The best practice is to avoid installing browser extensions from unverified sources. If you have any extensions installed, it's worth taking a look at their developers and make sure you trust them before continuing to use them. Even though it's not enough to be held accountable for the latest attack, it does not shine a good light on the social media platform.
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