Data scrapers expose 2.6 million records of TikTok, Instagram influencers

According to security detectiveIt is estimated that over 2 million social media users may be affected by Xposed Server.

Compromised ElasticSearch Server Allegedly Belongs to a Social Media Analytics Site IGBlade.com, which uses analytics tools to track follower growth, engagement rate, and account history, along with many other metrics for any Instagram or TikTok account. Security spies informed IGBlade about the compromised server on July 5 this year and found that they had secured it the same day.

During the search, security detectives found that IGBlade’s ElasticSearch server was not using any authentication or security features to protect the data, making it open and accessible to anyone who discovered the server. As the researchers discovered the leak, the exposed server was updating with new information.

According to Safety Detectives, the leaked records include links to screenshots and profile pictures in addition to personal data, such as full usernames, user bios, email addresses, phone numbers, location data, media and number of followers.

IGBlade requires users to create an account on its platform in order to take advantage of the company’s services. Security spies found that users’ scraped data on exposed servers matched user data IGBlade.com Page.

The security researchers posted screenshots of cached profile pictures and links to some of the leaked accounts on their website as part of their search.

Most social media platforms prohibit data scraping in their policies, but have fallen victim to it nonetheless. Instagram prohibits crawling, scraping or caching any content from the Platform in its Terms of Use. This is not the first time that the data of these platforms has been leaked. In August 2020, Comparitech researchers discovered an insecure database that exposed data from 235 million Instagram, TikTok and YouTube user profiles.