About 5.5 million Twitter user IDs, profile pictures, posts, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and location information have been exposed by a group of cybercriminals and made it public on the online hacking platform. This huge user data were stolen by exploiting Twitter’s security flaw last year. Earlier, the information was sold online for $30,000, but this is the first time cybercriminals are offering the opportunity publicly to use the data for free.
According to the Times of India, a cyber security expert named Chad Loder was the first to identify the issue of stealing Twitter data and selling it online. He said, apart from 5.5 million pieces of information, the cybercriminals have stolen the phone numbers of about 1.4 million Twitter users.
Instead of selling stolen phone numbers, cybercriminals keep them for themselves. As a result, it is believed that the phone numbers can be used for various fraudulent purposes. Twitter suspended Chad Loder’s account shortly after he tweeted to warn users about data theft.
