149 million social media users face data leakage, says Cyber Security

ISLAMABAD: Cybersecurity experts have revealed that a misconfigured cloud database on the Internet has leaked the usernames, passwords, and other related information of about 149 million Facebook, Instagram, and Gmail users.

This database was discovered by cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler, according to whom it contained 96 gigabytes of unsecured data. This data included not only email and social media accounts, but also information from accounts of various online services.

During the investigation, it was found that the affected accounts include 48 million Gmail, 17 million Facebook, 6.5 million Instagram, 3.4 million Netflix, 780,000 TikTok, 420,000 Binance, and 100,000 OnlyFans accounts. In addition, millions of users of Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud, and educational email accounts were also affected.

According to experts, this information was obtained through a virus that enters the affected mobile or computer and steals the user’s passwords, data stored in the browser, and other sensitive information, after which this data is transferred to hackers.

Cybersecurity experts have warned that this type of data leak can increase the risks of account misuse, financial fraud and sending fake messages, especially if users use the same password for different accounts.

The important thing is that this data leak did not occur due to hacking a single company’s system, but rather as a result of information collected from various sources.