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Hackers Claim They Possess Details of 120 Million Facebook Accounts, Publish Private Messages From 81,000 of Them (bbc.com)
Andrei Zakharov, reporting for BBC: Hackers appear to have compromised and published private messages from at least 81,000 Facebook users' accounts. The perpetrators told the BBC Russian Service that they had details from a total of 120 million accounts, which they were attempting to sell, although there are reasons to be sceptical about that figure.
Facebook said its security had not been compromised. And the data had probably been obtained through malicious browser extensions.
Facebook added it had taken steps to prevent further accounts being affected. The BBC understands many of the users whose details have been compromised are based in Ukraine and Russia. However, some are from the UK, US, Brazil and elsewhere. The hackers offered to sell access for 10 cents (8p) per account. However, their advert has since been taken offline. "We have contacted browser-makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores," said Facebook executive Guy Rosen. "We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts."
Facebook added it had taken steps to prevent further accounts being affected. The BBC understands many of the users whose details have been compromised are based in Ukraine and Russia. However, some are from the UK, US, Brazil and elsewhere. The hackers offered to sell access for 10 cents (8p) per account. However, their advert has since been taken offline. "We have contacted browser-makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores," said Facebook executive Guy Rosen. "We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts."
It's probably not all that dangerous on a micro leve, but in the age of social mapping, personalized psychographics, and cybernetics, data brokers are becoming better and better at quantifying every data point. Metadata is much more valuable to them than any particular personal secret or private thought.
The more information a group has about a person, the better profile they can build on them. The better the portfolio of profiles, the more easily they can manipulate the individuals. This is how advertising works. But these methods are used for more than just trying to sell products, they are also used by political campaigns that try to figure out how to target individuals with ads, article recommendations, and other content that will be more likely to convince the individual to vote for their cause. This was what the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal was about.
Those profiles could also be used by agitators to figure out how to manipulate people to divide them, instigating more and more toxic interpersonal interactions in a region. Some of those agitators might be the politicians from those regions themselves, while other could be interests from outside those regions.