Several French sites have been affected by a cyber attack.
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Jenny Kane / AP / SIPA
More than 214 million user profiles of social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram were discovered last December by the company SafetyDetectives on poorly secured servers of a Chinese start-up.
New proof of the importance of protecting your personal data on social networks.
Indeed,
Le Parisien
indicated that the Chinese company Socialarks compiled more than 214 million user profiles or 408 GB of personal data.
For France, this concerns 680,733 LinkedIn profiles, 109,869 complete Facebook profiles and 28,468 Instagram profiles.
Leakage of user data
The goal was to create personalized marketing strategies for its clients.
On the other hand, the Chinese company had stored personal data on an unsecured server, accessible without a password.
In addition, the data was not encrypted.
Hackers were therefore able to take advantage of this self-service database to retrieve users' personal information.
After this discovery, the company SafetyDetectives contacted the Chinese company to warn them of the data breach.
Despite the lack of response, the affected server was deactivated last December.
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Cyber attack
High Tech
Hacker
Social networks
Personal data