Abstract
In April 2021, cybercriminals posted online the personal information of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including 32 million in the U.S., 11 million in the U.K., and 6 million in India (1). The leaked personal data includes full names, locations, birthdates, relationship statuses, phone numbers, and in some cases email addresses.
“Quite simply, it was a mistake.”
– Google’s Senior VP Alan Eustace (May 2010)
“This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly.”
– Apple Press Info (April 2011)
“We are sorry. We made a mistake.”
– Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin (February 2012)
“There are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those that will be. Even that is merging into one category: those that have been hacked and will be again.”
— FBI Director Robert Mueller (March 2012)
“It wasn’t secret, nobody leaked it; it was not a big secret.”
– Columbia University Prof. John Dinges (May 2013)
“We’re focused on protecting people’s data by working to get this data set taken down and will continue to aggressively go after malicious actors who misuse our tools wherever possible. While we can’t always prevent data sets like these from recirculating or new ones from appearing, we have a dedicated team focused on this work.”
– Facebook Product Management Director Mike Clark (April 2021)
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Lee, N. (2021). Privacy Breaches. In: Facebook Nation. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1867-7_4
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