A server with databases holding the phone numbers and identity numbers of perhaps as many as 200 million Facebook users in the U.S., the U.K. and other countries has been found open on the Internet by a security researcher.
No one knows who the database belongs to, how or when it was copied from Facebook, according to TechCrunch, which first reported the discovery Wednesday.
A total of 413 million records are in the databases, but according to news reports, roughly half of them are duplicates.
TechCrunch quoted Facebook spokesperson Jay Nancarrow as saying the data had been scraped before Facebook cut off public access to user phone numbers over a year ago. Until then users could search the social media site for phone numbers.
Here is the full story from Howard Solomon at IT World Canada