It was recently discovered that well over 500 million Facebook users had their personal information shared as part of a massive leak, but thanks to a new tool that's popped up online, people can now easily check to see if their data was included in the attack. Hearing that hundreds of millions of individuals have had their personal information compromised is a scary headline, especially when it's unclear if someone's own data is included in all of that.
As for how this information was leaked in the first place, it's a result of a data breach that Facebook faced back in 2019. Facebook did eventually resolve the incident, but heaps of user data were still collected — including people's real names, birthdays, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. That information was shared to a hacking forum on April 3, 2021, leaving a lot of people at potential risk (including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself).
While it's difficult to find a silver lining for a story like this, the good news is that it's extremely easy for anyone to verify if their own info was included in the leak — all thanks to a free data checking tool. On a computer, smartphone, or tablet, go to "https://www.thenewseachday.com/facebook-phone-numbers-us.". There's a field to enter a phone number on that page, with it needing to be entered in the international format without any digits (for example, 15551234567 instead of 555-123-4567). Click the 'Check' button after entering the phone number, and in an instant, the website will confirm whether or not that number was included in the data leak.
Who Created The Data Check Tool For This Facebook Leak
The tool for looking up phone numbers from the Facebook leak comes from a website called 'The News Each Day.' It's primarily a political news site that describes its main purpose as finding "stories of the moment, particularly those that are only being reported in one outlet." The team at Gizmodo verified that the website is accurate with its data checking tool, comparing The News Each Day's results to phone numbers that appear in the actual leak.
As for whether the tool is safe to use, there aren't any indicators that anything malicious is happening behind the scenes with it. The site is just comparing the entered phone number against those present in the data leak, and after running a check, there's a message from the person running The News Each Day saying they're "not saving the phone number you enter." With a leak as massive (and potentially harmful) as this one, it's worth someone taking a couple of seconds to use the tool to see if they're among the 533 million users that are affected.
Source: The News Each Day, Gizmodo