Page 8 - Florida Sentinel 12-24-19

State News
Data Of More Than 267 Million Facebook Users
Has Been Exposed Online
Babies In Florida Hospital's NICU All Dressed Up For The Holidays
Personal information be- longing to more than 267 million Facebook users has been exposed in an unse- cured database on the dark web, it has emerged.
The Facebook IDs, phone numbers and full names of 267,140,436 users, most re- siding in the US, were dis- covered in the database by cybersecurity firm Compar- itech and researcher Bob Diachenko, according to a report published Thursday.
The report warned that people identified in the data- base could be targeted by spam messages or phishing schemes.
Although it is not yet clear how the sensitive infor- mation was exposed, Di- achenko traced the database back to Vietnam and speculated that it may have been compiled through an illegal process called 'scraping' – where auto-
BOB DIACHENKO
mated bots copy public in- formation from Facebook profiles - or stolen directly from Facebook's developer
Access to the database has since been removed, however, the records ap- peared to have been avail- able without a password to anyone without authentica- tion for two weeks before it was uncovered. A download- able link to the data had also been posted to a popular
hacker forum.
The security breach fol-
lows a massive leak in Sep- tember in which more than 400 million user phone numbers were exposed -and then there was the major scandal in 2018.
It was revealed that Cam- bridge Analytica had har- vested the personal data of millions of peoples' Face- book profiles without their consent and used it for polit- ical advertising purposes.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to DailyMail.com that the database had been taken down and said: 'We are looking into this issue, but believe this is likely in- formation obtained before changes we made in the past few years to better protect people's information.'
Facebook removed phone-number information from its API in April 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal - meaning that the numbers included in the database are likely more than 18 months old.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Adorable babies in a Florida hospital's newborn inten- sive care unit are all dressed up for the holidays.
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare says their night nurses created the costumes while the day nurses helped bring the holiday cheer to life. The babies were dressed as festive trees, snowmen and precious
presents labeled "special de- livery" and "best gift ever."
"Having a new baby in the NICU can sometimes make the holidays feel a lit- tle less merry," TMH offi- cials wrote in a statement. "But our amazing team works to make the environ- ment as comfortable as pos- sible for our babies and families – including bring- ing the festive fun to them!"
PAGE 8 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2019