The Irish Digital Authority warns that hacking of data on more than 500 million Facebook users, mainly in Europe, could lead to spam or infiltration of Internet accounts.

The Digital Authority (DPC) points out that “personal data that appears to be coming from Facebook has access to a hacking site this weekend and contains data from 533 million people.”

The DPC adds that some of this data goes back to 2018, while others say it may be “more recent”, “no advance information received from Facebook” and still requests information to the social network.

Stolen data, including emails and phone numbers, exposes users to “marketing spam”, but in the event that third parties attempt to gain access, users should be wary of any service that requires authentication via a phone number or email address. .

This is not the first time data from millions of users of the first social network – with 2.8 billion users per month – has been available online.

A Facebook spokesman said the data hacked this weekend was outdated and that its leak had been “reported in the media in 2019. In August 2019, we identified and fixed this issue.”

The Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 revealed the name of a British company that misused the personal data of millions of Facebook users for political campaign purposes, tarnishing the reputation of this social network on the issue of data confidentiality.