According to a report by Motherboard, a new Telegram bot is capable of identifying the phone numbers of anyone who has liked a specific Facebook page.
Hence, if you’ve ever liked cryptocurrency-related pages, scammers could potentially use your personal information for social engineering attacks or SIM-swapping.
Hudson Rock CTO Alon Gal claims that your date could be potentially sold as business leads to companies:
For instance, extract the 'Bitcoin UK' group and convert them to a list of phone numbers read to be sold as leads to companies, quite a lucrative business.
The bot provides a no-frills spreadsheet that includes the full name of a user, gender as well as his or her number.
The cost of a data request depends on the popularity of a certain page. Those with less than 100 likes are free.
Should you refrain from liking things on Facebook? Probably not. Motherboard claims that the bot is not capable of leaking information about new likes.
Alex DovbnyaA tough week for Facebook
On Apr. 3, a free database that contains 533 million Facebook records got leaked on a popular hacking forum. It includes email addresses, phone numbers, and other sensitive information.
According to researcher analysis, the Telegram bot’s dataset is not related to the previously disclosed breach.
U.Today Editorial Team
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin