Alon Gal, chief technology officer of cyber crime intelligence company Hudson Rock, tweeted the news on Saturday after discovering the data posted for free on a forum. It followed a tweet he posted in January this year, warning that a vulnerability had allowed the database to be created in early 2020. The January tweet warned that the user had created a Telegram bot that would allow anyone to query the database for a low fee, allowing people to find phone numbers linked to many Facebook accounts.
The January tweet showed the data breach contained 32.3 million US Facebook accounts, representing just under 10% of the entire US population.