Is It True Private Data Of 1.5 Billion Facebook Users Is Being Sold Online By Hackers?

Facebook Inc FB, has not had a pleasant week, to say the least. The company is battling allegations of prioritizing profits over the safety of its users and has also endured one of its largest outages in recent memory when its three platforms — Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — went dark for over six hours on Monday. 

What Happened: Another offshoot of the blackout was the fact that rumors began circulating regarding the reason for the outage, with media reports noting that the data of over 1.5 billion Facebook users have been put on sale online by hackers. 

This theory gained further momentum when Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) highlighted the issue during a Senate subcommittee hearing, stating, "News broke yesterday that the private data of over 1.5 billion — that’s right, 1.5 billion — Facebook users is being sold on a hacking forum. That’s its biggest data breach to date."

See Also: With Facebook Outage, Rival Telegram Says It Saw A Record 70 Million New User Sign-Ups In A Single Day

Are The Rumors True? Despite the accusation, there is no compelling evidence to substantiate this claim, as first noted by the New York Times. 

The origin of the rumor is in a post on a forum called RaidForums from Sept. 22 and its authenticity hasn't been verified. As per NYT, it is likely to be fake.

The authenticity of the reports concerning the data being sold was earlier questioned by Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler, who noted that "someone recently posted that they paid the OP for this alleged data and was scammed."

This tweet is based on a two-week-old thread on RaidForums. In that same thread, someone recently posted that they paid the OP for this alleged data and was scammed.

Maybe it's real, but no reason to breathlessly report it like this. https://t.co/nat3VosMqd

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) October 4, 2021

A Facebook spokesperson told the NYT that the company is investigating the claim and has "sent a takedown request to the forum that’s advertising the alleged data.”

Price Action: Facebook stock traded 1.1% lower at $332.96at press time on Tuesday.