Home facebook matrixMeta, delivered user information to hackers who posed as police officers last year, a company source said Wednesday.
The assailants were able to obtain details such as physical addresses or phone numbers with falsified “emergency data requests,” said the source, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The hackers use emails or websites related to the police or the government to make their victims believe that they cannot wait for a judge’s order to obtain the information because it is an “urgent matter of life or death”, the cyber expert wrote on Tuesday Brian Krebs.
The Bloomberg news agency reported that Apple also provided user information in response to counterfeit requests. Apple and Meta did not formally confirm the incidents, but provided statements about their handling of information requests.
When cops want data on the owner of a social media account, or an associated phone, they must serve a court order or subpoena, Krebs wrote.
But in urgent cases they can make an “emergency data request,” which “largely evades any official review and does not require the applicant to provide a court-approved document.”
The expert also pointed out that the lack of a single national system for this type of request is one of the biggest existing problems, because each company ends up treating the cases in its own way.
To further complicate matters, there are tens of thousands of law enforcement jurisdictions around the world – including some 18,000 in the United States alone – and all hackers need to be successful is illicit access to a single email account. of the police,” he added.
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