Your Facebook Details Could Be For Sale -- For $5!

Bogomil Shopov, a blogger and digital rights activist from Bulgaria, recently claimed that he successfully bought users? details and other pertinent online information on Facebook for only $5. He wished for the social network to immediately know about the transaction, as it would help improve the protection of users online. An investigation by Facebook is currently underway since the company firmly believes that the purchase was done illegally. According to the social media website, Shopov did not buy the 1.1 million user names, emails and user IDs, but, instead, scraped these off the public data of users. Facebook said it is quite hard to believe that all these were simply acquired using an application. The company indicated through a statement they will take aggressive action against Shopov?s reports, as well as other similar situations. The group has several teams consisting of online experts and security professionals who will determine and confirm the report. Shopov further claims that he did purchase the #Facebook users? details and these were not gathered from mere scraping of public profiles. Majority of the details were in fact existent and he knows a number of users from whom the information were collected. The blogger reviewed some of the email addresses and indicated that these were not displayed in public. Shopov gave his statements to Forbes. Shopov further said that Facebook got in touch with him shortly after he shared his successful purchase. The company allegedly told him not to further share information. Facebook requested him to remove his copy of the information, as well as give them the details regarding the source and people. According to Shopov, ?I agreed to send them the data and the Web site, of course, for that was my purpose. I tried to ask what they would do next, but they said it would be an internal legal investigation.? The information was shared on Gigbucks, where Shopov said that the user information usually originated from people in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. The applications used generally included instructions in English. Facebook did not comment to Shopov on what it would do further after receiving the information. Facebook still needs to finalize the investigation to give more light on how online users can stay protected and secure on the internet and while using social media networks. Now that that's still unresolved, how do you feel about this news? Let us know in the comments!