Recent reports have now confirmed that data of over 533 million Facebook users, is moving around in the circle of hackers and is available for a few euros. Though Facebook claims that the data is old, people rarely change their phone numbers. The data also includes names, birthdates, relationship status, current city, workplace, and maybe even email addresses.
Now the question is, how to know if your phone number is on the list of 533 million users. Well, a website called The News Each Day has made a simple tool that can check if your phone number is on the list or not. They have a version for the US and one for Australia, so people from both countries can check. Even if the tools say you’re safe, I would still recommend changing your phone number.
Now before you go input your number, read this section first. The website does say that it won’t save your phone number but one can never know. Their privacy policy looks clean and they have even released the source code for the tool to quell any suspicions. If you really want to know if you’re in the data leak then a better tool would be HaveIBeenPwned. It also has more databases that may also contain your data.
You could also go extreme and just find the original dataset, it is just a simple google search away now that the data has been released for free. But you know that’s kind of illegal and I strongly recommend you don’t do that.
So if you haven’t changed your phone number since before 2019 then I’d recommend you get a new one. Especially since your phone number is mostly used for two-factor authentications.
