According to a cybersecurity specialist, a minimum of 267 million names, contact information, and user identification of Facebook account owners were found on the dark web.

According to a report worked on by a tech website named Comparitech and Bob Diachenko (a researcher), in the past 2 weeks, a huge amount of sensitive data was able to be accessed by anyone who is aiming to view such information.

According to the research team, the Facebook leak of sensitive information was made available to everyone since December 4. Later on, the researchers had located a forum of hackers after 8 days.

The ease of access to this confidential information was shut down after the research team had told the internet provider the issue involving the unsecured status of information. Diachenko had sat down as a download in the forum of the hackers for one week.

According to the report of the research team, the pieces of evidence that they had gathered reveal that the database containing sensitive information is owned by a criminal association located in the country of Vietnam.

The majority of the Facebook account users whose sensitive information was revealed were US citizens totaling to 267.10 million.

According to Comparitech, the actual story of how sensitive information from various Facebook account holders was accessed by hackers was not certain. However, Comparitech suggests that the information may have been attained through scraping.

Scraping is a procedure by which bots try to copy and store data from various websites. This is not allowed on Facebook as seen from its terms of service.

When a Facebook account is created as a public account, scraping is possible.

Comparitech also said that the leakage of the sensitive information of the victims makes them an easy target for spams and phishing activity by hackers on the net.

According to a statement released by Facebook, the management of the company is investigating the issue. Facebook primarily suggests that the information that was collected by the hackers were those which were placed on the site in the past couple of years before improvements were made to secure the Facebook users' confidential information.

This incident is not the first of its kind. In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica Controversy had also suffered similar circumstances with the Facebook leak of sensitive information. Currently, the social network Menlo Park is exerting its best efforts to secure the confidential information of its account holders.

According to J. Eduardo Campos, a cybersecurity professional, primarily, the Facebook leak of the sensitive information of account holders is not as bad as the Cambridge Analytica Controversy. He is still reserving his final verdict on the matter whether his preliminary outlook on the matter was correct or not.

Campos also said that the incident has a possibility of becoming as terrible as the Cambridge Analytica Controversy. He also stressed the insufficient information regarding the capabilities of the hackers behind the incident. He explained that the Cambridge Analytics was worse because the relevant details of its hackers were completely attained.

In 2018, Facebook had announced that a virus in the system had released to the public the private photos uploaded by approximately 7 million Facebook account holders.