‘Millions of Telephone numbers of Instagram influencers Public.’ The personal information, including telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, of millions of Instagram influencers, has been online for an unknown time, according to the reports on Monday.
The data were linked to public profile information.
The data was accessible via a server that was not protected with a password.
According to reports, the data of at least 49 million accounts could be found there.
In addition to influencers, individuals with a vast online reach through social media marketing companies,
the database also included data from celebrity and corporate accounts.
It is not clear from the news who exactly fell victim to data collection.
Also, reported that the unprotected server was managed by the Indian company Chatterbox,
which works with influencer marketing.
Presumably, the data was collected via a method called scraping.
An automatic program collects the data.
Because this is against the rules of Instagram, a spokesperson for the parent company,
Facebook states the company is investigating the case.