Podcast: Chris Vickery on UpGuard’s Discovery of Millions of Facebook Records

Chris Vickery with UpGuard, who discovered two datasets exposing millions of Facebook records, discusses his findings and the implications of data collection with Threatpost.

Data collection and security was thrust to the forefront this week after researchers with UpGuard disclosed that hundreds of millions of Facebook records were found in two separate publicly-exposed app datasets.

The two publicly-exposed datasets included one controlled by Mexican media company Cultura Colectiva, which contained over 540 million records; and another held by Facebook-integrated app titled At the Pool, which exposed plaintext app passwords for 22,000 users and other data. Both exposed databases have been secured, researchers said.

In this Threatpost Podcast Chris Vickery, the director of cyber risk research at UpGuard, shares how he publicly-exposed the data, who might be to blame for the incident and the growing risks of third-party data collection.

“When you collect these large datasets and companies do it everyday, it creates a longstanding liability,” he said. “You don’t know who will have a copy of it in the future and if they’ll take care of it. People you’re promising today that you’ll guard their data, can you really make a promise that would last 10 years down the line or so?”

Listen to the full podcast below.

For direct download, click here.

Suggested articles