The information of nearly 50 million Instagram influencers, celebrities and brand accounts has been found online, stored in an unguarded database.
Each record contained the account owner's public data, including bio, profile picture and number of followers, as well as private information, such as phone number and email address.
The database - stored on an Amazon server, minus a password - was uncovered by a security researcher, who alerted TechCrunch in the hope of getting the database secured.
The database was subsequently tracked to a Mumbai-based company called Chtrbox, which pays influencers to post sponsored content. After being contacted, Chtrbox pulled the database offline. Since the breach, they have kept a low profile and denied all requests from the media.
Facebook, which owns Instagram (now with more than a billion users), said it was "looking into the issue to understand if the data was from Instagram or other sources. We're also inquiring with Chtrbox to understand where this data came from and how it became publicly available."
