Facebook has suffered one of the largest data breaches in recent years. A total of about 533 million users across 106 countries have had their private data which includes emails and phone numbers compromised. In recent reports, it seems like Mark Zuckerberg himself is affected by the breach.
However, in a statement to Reuters, Facebook has clarified that it has no plans to inform the users affected by the breach. In fact, the company states that it isn’t confident that it has complete visibility of the data that has been leaked. The spokesperson also noted that users will still be unable to take action even if they are informed.
So what can you do to check if you’ve been affected by the breach? The easiest way to check is to use the website haveibeenpwned.com. The website is able to check whether your information has been involved in breaches across the internet. Sites as old as myspace and Neopets have had breaches to their data. U.S. Residents also have the option of using The News Each Day.
Once on the website, enter the data you want to check – it can be your email, password or even phone number. If you’re checking for a phone number, be sure to include your country code. So, if you’re checking for a Malaysian mobile number, type in the “6” before your operator prefix. Then simply click the “pwned?” button. It will check all the available breaches for the data and return an answer. You’ll get one of two possible results: “Oh no – pwned!” or “Good news – no pwnage found”.
So what should you do if your data has been involved in a breach? The first thing you should do is to change your passwords – particularly if you are fond of using the same password for multiple services. The next thing you should do is activate 2-factor authentication (2FA) for all your services. It may be a little bit inconvenient but it will save you a lot of hassle in the long run. Be sure that you have a secure password moving forward and make sure to keep your passwords for every service unique.
Beyond this, you really don’t have much that you can do. Moving forward you just have to be a little bit more prudent about the information you share online. Where possible, try not to link sensitive data such as your phone number to online accounts. Since there was a significant number of phone numbers in this breach, you may want to be alert when it comes to dealing with unknown callers.
However, it’s no reason to be panicky. Once you’ve secured your accounts, your data should be secured for the foreseeable future.
