Facebook under investigation in Europe over leaked accounts
Facebook under investigation in Europe over leaked accounts
Facebook under investigation in Europe over leaked accounts
A formal investigation will aim to establish whether Facebook’s handling of
the leak constitutes a breach of the GDPR. Facebook is under investigation in
Europe for a leak that exposed the personal data of more than 530 million global
users of its services. The Irish Data Protection Commission, the watchdog responsible
for ensuring Facebook abides by European privacy laws, announced on Wednesday
that it was opening an inquiry into whether the leak constituted a breach of the
General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
Personal information on hundreds of millions of Facebook users, including names,
birth dates, email addresses and phone numbers, was discovered on a website
for hackers back in January. The data set contains information on 533 million users
from 106 countries, according to Business Insider, which first reported on its
availability at the beginning of April.
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Earlier this month, Facebook said the leak hadn’t been caused by its services
being hacked, but through the exploitation of a security hole that allowed
data to be scraped from the platform. The vulnerability was fixed by
Facebook in 2019, the company said.
The aim of the DPC’s investigation will be to establish whether Facebook
complied with its obligations as the “controller” of users’ personal data,
the regulator said in a statement. Among these obligations are Facebook’s
responsibility to inform the correct data protection authority and affected
individual users of any data leaks in a timely manner.
“We are cooperating fully with the IDPC in its enquiry, which relates to features
that make it easier for people to find and connect with friends on our services,”
said a spokeswoman for Facebook in an emailed statement. “These features
are common to many apps and we look forward to explaining them and
the protections we have put in place.”
Facebook doesn’t yet appear to have notified any users affected by the leak.
If Facebook is found to be in breach of the GDPR, the company can be
fined up to 4 percent of its global annual turnover.
To check whether a particular Facebook account was affected, users can
search the breach-tracking website Have I Been Pwned?
