Delete Facebook. The saying has become a popular hashtag and has moved many to distance themselves from its services. Delete Facebook has trended over various controversies, many of them being due to data leaks, hacks, and mostly privacy concerns.
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Business Insider reports that 533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online. The report states that this personal data was leaked on a “low-level” hacking forum and posted for all to see. The data includes Facebook users’ phone numbers, full names, physical addresses, email addresses, and biographical information.
The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.
Business Insider
We have covered Facebook privacy and data issues extensively over the years, but we never really seriously thought about deleting Facebook. Facebook has been a tool for us to reach a portion of our audience, and simply removing it would likely impact our viewership. But we are to a point where our confidence in Facebook is near zero, and moving to delete Facebook is something we feel needs to be done.
Our decision is based on the past actions and neglect Facebook has demonstrated, which have left us in a bind. Continuing to support a company that has been this careless in both privacy and security is something we cannot continue to do. Please understand this; our choice to delete Facebook is in no way a call to action for others to do the same. You all have to come to your own conclusions and choices in the matter.
It is also important to understand that we are not ruling out a return to Facebook in the future, but that would require the company to make some serious overhauls and changes to privacy and security.
That being said, you can find us on other social media outlets listed below:
This makes you wonder as to how much of that information ends up in the legitimate marketing industry. It only takes a few vendors to integrate this data into the broader data set the marketing industry uses. Mobile numbers and Facebook handles are typically in pretty high demand. Of course, the unscrupulous scammers will use every bit of information they can get in their scams.
Purandar Das, CEO and Co-Founder at Sotero
For now, Techaeris has moved to delete Facebook as one of our tools. We hope our Facebook followers look for us on other platforms or at least bookmark the site. Best of luck to all, and be sure to read as much material as you can on this Facebook situation when making any decisions.
What do you think of this latest Facebook leak? Please share your thoughts on any of our social media pages. You can also comment on our MeWe page by joining the MeWe social network.
