Personal data is one of the most valuable things in today's world. You only have to Google your first and last name to find out if there is any freely available information such as your phone numbers, your place of residence or even your dog's name? Developers of popular social networks and online services talk a lot about their efforts to protect their customers' data. But is security suffering in the search for new features and the speed of implementation?
Considering that in France alone, over 58 percent of the population regularly uses social media, let's look at some high-profile cases of data theft shared by users. In fact, a very large portion of these users don't even care about the complexity of their password, regardless of their country of residence.
On October 4, 2021, internet users experienced the biggest disruption in history. Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp were not working. Then, the data of 1,5 billion users of Facebook with their phone numbers, emails and home addresses have been put up for sale on a hacker forum. This comes after high-profile scandals involving leaks of user data used to help elect D. Trump and influence the British people's decision on Brexit.
Clubhouse
In April 2021, hackers published information on the darknet about 1,3 million users of the voice social network Clubhousewhich, according to data published by MBA MCI, boasted 6 million users in February 2021. Impressive for a relatively new social network. The compromised information included names, links to photos, profiles on other social networks, and subscriptions. The network's CEO denied that users' personal data had been stolen and stated that the information that had been collected was of a public nature. Later, it was indeed reported that Clubhouse had not been hacked.
This is the most recent case that has occurred. Twitter suffered a data breach after hackers exploited a vulnerability in its Android mobile app Twitter. A database containing the phone numbers and email addresses of 5,4 million users of the social network was created. It was later put up for sale on a hacker platform for $30. It includes data from various companies, ordinary people and world celebrities. Although this is publicly available data, hackers can use it to carry out phishing attacks on email addresses and phone numbers. For now, Twitter did not confirm the data leak, stating that the investigation into the incident is ongoing. However, BleepingComputer checked some of the demo profiles and found that the information they contain is accurate. CNIL continues to raise awareness French users against numerous attempts to compromise their data.
