Bulgarian Blogger Discovers Huge Trade of Facebook Data

Prominent Bulgaria blogger and digital rights activist, Bogomil Shopov, has discovered that information and data about a huge number of Facebook users can be purchased online for pocket change.

The news was reported by the site for investigative journalism Bivol.bg and later by the Bulgarian Trud (Labor) daily. Bivol write Shopov is on his way to make international headlines over the discovery.

The blogger has discovered the site Gigbucks and has managed to purchase 1 million Facebook data entries for USD 5. He found the names and the emails of users from the US, Canada, Great Britain and Europe, along with those of a number of his Facebook friends.

The list is in the form of an Excel table, containing email addresses, names and Facebook profiles.

Bivol reports that since Tuesday the information is being actively discussed on Twitter while Shopov's site has become inaccessible over the huge traffic.

The blogger, who is one of the founders of the Bulgarian Pirate Party, told Bivol that Facebook employees have already been in touch with him and asked to have a phone conversation.

He has added that the Gigbucks site has most likely originated in Turkey, while the data has been collected through a Facebook application where users inadvertently clicked without knowing information on them will be later sold.

According to Trud, Shopov, himself, sent the information to Facebook administrators and they told him they will contact him via Skype.

Bivol reminds that Facebook is subject to frequent criticism over security glitches in protecting users' data and its trade.