Data like a person's address, date of birth and full name could be used to try to usurp a person’s identity Shutterstock

Data like a person's address, date of birth and full name could be used to try to usurp a person’s identity Shutterstock

On the darknet, the supermarket of terrorism and organised crime--also used by journalists in totalitarian countries--Incert spotted the data of 188,000 Luxembourg residents among 514 million data sets from Facebook and April 2019.

Among the data are surnames, first names, dates of birth, postal and e-mail addresses or telephone numbers, Incert managing director Benoît Poletti told our colleagues at Paperjam. He said the data was not jaw-droppingly compromising, "except that it's very useful for social engineering.” This means that, in the wrong hands, the data could be used to try to usurp a person’s identity for often purely commercial purposes.

“If we say this, it's both to tell people to look after their data, but also to separate their private data from their professional data, because it also allows us to know how to put pressure on a company's employees,” Poletti said.

Anyone who uses social media networks should not only strictly separate the professional from the private, but also regularly review their privacy settings.

This story was translated from an article first published on Paperjam.lu