Although many people would not give their phone number to an unknown person on the road, they are contented to share their numbers with Facebook, Google, and added sites. However, as millions of immature Snapchat users simply educated, phone numbers are helpful information to hackers.

On Wednesday, Snapchat happened to be the first corporation to have its important information hacked in 2014. Almost 5 million account consumer names and partial phone numbers were sent online as a forewarning to those making use of the photograph messaging service. “Our inspiration behind the publication was to raise the public awareness about the issue, as well as put public strain on Snapchat to get this develop fixed,” the suspected hackers told tech site TheVerge.com . The spokesperson for Snapchat refused to comment, although the company unconfined a blog post saying its supplementary counteractions “to fight abuse and spam.”

Consumers are meant to be cagey about sharing their phone numbers, security experts say. “Phone contacts are unique identifiers that lean to last for an extended time,” utters Michael Fertik, CEO at Reputation.com, and a site that helps consumers protecting their privacy online. “You change your phone number a lot less often than your IP address as well as probably even your residential address” when Snapchat users have fake user names. Many citizens use the equivalent I.D. across various social networks, states Graham Cluley, a U.K. safety blogger and technology counselor. “Use a different user I.D. than the one you makes use of publicly on Facebook as well as Twitter,” he says. What is added, typing just a cell phone number to the Facebook will expose the profiles of the owner if they added it to their account data.