Facebook sues Ukrainian hacker for selling user information from 178 million accounts

Facebook is suing a Ukrainian national suspected of scraping and selling information from 178 million users on the platform in 2018-2019, according to American publication Insider.

According to the court documents, Ukrainian hacker Alexander Solonchenko exploited a feature in Facebook Messenger called ‘contact importer,’ which allows users to sync their phone address books and view which of their friends had Facebook Messenger. Thus, Solonchenko accessed and sold user IDs and phone numbers, violating the terms of service of Facebook. 

The data was technically publicly available, but Solonchenko sold this information on online forums under the online alias ‘Solomane,’ according to the lawsuit filed on Oct. 28 against him.

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