A bot at Telegram is supposed to spit out the phone numbers of Facebook users on request and for a small fee. That should be possible with several hundred million accounts. It is unclear where exactly the data came from. However, there have already been multiple data leaks and other problems on Facebook, which led to telephone numbers being freely available.

About the bot, who throws out the numbers at Telegram, reports threadreaderapp.com . To get the phone number, all you have to do is enter the Facebook ID. This can be found foolproof on websites on which you only have to enter the public URL of a profile. If you have a phone number, it also works the other way around and the associated profile is specified. In Germany, the profiles and numbers of six million Facebook users should be available.

Where did the Facebook data come from? According to the report, the phone numbers could be via a Vulnerability to be tapped that showed up at the beginning 2020. 533 Millions of users were affected. But it is not the only chance there has ever been to get the data. Already at the end 2019 it was said that 419 Millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers including ID were freely available on a server. Real names, gender and nationality are also said to have been assigned there. It is also unclear who maintained this database. It went offline shortly afterwards. But it could of course have been copied.

Facebook suspected at the time that someone had collected the number by searching for a user. Up to 2012 it was possible to find profiles by phone number or email address. Advertisers were also able to gain access to the telephone numbers later, although this should not have been the case. Facebook is actually only allowed to use the numbers for two-factor authentication. Inappropriately, there has already been abuse for advertising purposes.

(emw)