A gigantic database with information on millions of Instagram accounts belonging to brands and celebrities was found on the internet. The database was hosted on Amazon Web Services and was available to the general public without the need for a password. A few hours ago, it contained more than 49 million records and was still growing.
The database contained information that can be found on users' profiles, such as their biography, profile picture, number of followers and location by city and country. But not only that, it also contained private information such as email address and phone number.
Security investigator Anurag Sen discovered the database and alerted the technology site TechCrunch, which managed to track the source of the database: a social network marketing company called Chtrbox, located in Bombay, India. This company pays Instagram celebrities to publish branded content to their accounts, and the database was used by the company to measure the value of each account based on its popularity.
Security breach exposes personal information from up to 50 million accounts. / AndroidPIT
Our source checked several of the data listed in the document and determined that they were correct. This new scandal comes just two years after Instagram admitted that a major security flaw in its developer API has allowed hackers to obtain private data from up to six million accounts. It was later discovered that the data had been sold by the hacker group in exchange for Bitcoins.
In response to the most recent incident, Facebook commented: "We are investigating this case to be able to verify that the copied data (including emails and phone numbers) comes from Instagram or another source. We are also talking to Chtrbox to understand how where the data came from and how it could be made public ".
Recently, Pavel Durov, owner of Telegram, declared that "WhatsApp will never be safe". Do you think the same about Instagram? Will these privacy scandals end with Facebook and all its companies? Tell us your opinion in the comments below.
(tagsToTranslate) instagram (t) hack (t) hacker (t) leak (t) leak (t) breach (t) password leak (t) hacking accounts (t) digital security (t) online privacy
