Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvfjsdhgfv | Hacker News Reader

How is this a story? The contact information is available, people and companies scrap the web all the time. There are tools and libraries for that purpose for any programming language. What's so surprising abut this piece of news then?

View on HN

> each record contained public data scraped from influencer Instagram accounts, including their bio, profile picture, the number of followers they have, if they’re verified and their location by city and country, but also contained their private contact information, such as the Instagram account owner’s email address and phone number.

They make a point to note that some of the contact info exposed wasn't public.

Sloppy reporting. Email & phone number are available for Instagram accounts linked to a business profile: "Business Profiles include a Contact button near the top of their profile. You'll be able to include directions, a phone number and / or an email address. Keep in mind that you must include at least 1 contact option when setting up your Business Profile."

If you follow some links it wont take you long to find your favorite celebrity's personal cell phone number. I think that's kind of a story.

That's very unlikely. The article is misleading in that the reporter seems to believe that emails / phone numbers are never exposed by Instagram. In fact "influencers" typically choose to set up an Instagram Business Profile containing email and / or phone number. So this is almost ceratinly public information that was scraped, not private information obtained via a breach. Assuming your "favorite celebrity" is a movie star, popular musician, etc, any contact info is very likely for their social media manager, not for them personally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com