81,000 Hacked Facebook Accounts for Sale: 5 Things to Know

Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) assisted the BBC in validating a dataset of 257,256 Facebook profiles—of which 81,208 included private messages—being advertised for sale; the sample is heavily weighted toward Ukrainian users and the seller claimed access to 120 million accounts, a claim the investigators could not confirm. The origin and collection method are unconfirmed (Facebook has suggested malicious browser extensions as a possibility), but the exposure of private messages raises risks such as extortion and identity fraud; the report advises standard mitigations like unique passwords and two-factor authentication.