Facebook Sues Programmer Who Allegedly Scraped Data for 178 Million Users
upstart writes:
Facebook sues programmer who allegedly scraped data for 178 million users:
Facebook has filed a lawsuit on Friday against a Ukrainian national for allegedly scraping its website and selling the personal data of more than 178 million users on an underground cybercrime forum.
According to court documents filed today, the man was identified as Alexander Alexandrovich Solonchenko, a resident of Kirovograd, Ukraine.
Facebook alleges that Solonchenko abused a feature part of the Facebook Messenger service called Contact Importer.
The feature allowed users to synchronize their phone address books and see which contacts had a Facebook account in order to allow users to reach out to their friends via Facebook Messenger.
Between January 2018 and September 2019, Facebook said that Solonchenko used an automated tool to pose as Android devices in order to feed Facebook servers with millions of random phone numbers.
As Facebook servers returned information for which phone numbers had an account on the site, Solonchenko collected the data, which he later collected and offered for sale on December 1, 2020, in a post on RaidForums, a notorious cybercrime forum and marketplace for stolen data.
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