Earlier in April of 2021, there was a massive leak of personal information of over 533 million users of Facebook. The data that was collected was private and even included phone numbers of users who didn’t have it on their public settings; Facebook has yet once again included itself into another hideous act of cybercrime. It is up to these social media platforms to come up with strong measures that forbid such acts, when users upload their private and personal information on any social media platform, the person is actually trusting the platform to keep this information safe. Why has it been that Facebook is the social media platform that most of the time gets involved in such acts? For this, Europe’s leading privacy regulator is investigating the tech giant to see if Facebook has broken any kind of kind of EU (European Union) Law with this poor handling of leak of private information of over 533 million people.
Last week, the European Union announced that they have started an open investigation regarding the social media site and if Facebook will be found to have broken any of the EU’s laws, then the social media giant would have to pay a huge amount of fine; this can be up to 4% of its $86 billion global revenue. Irelands Data Protection Commission (DPC) has said in a statement that there is a huge possibility that Facebook might have broken some rules. Ireland’s DPC have been put in charge to overlook Facebook’s privacy rules in accordance with the European Union. The reason why Facebook might be in more trouble is also because of the fact that a mishap like this also occurred in 2019, the company to that said that it happened due to a vulnerability and under layed the whole scenario. The company didn’t even pass a public statement to his until this second mishap.
A spokesperson from Facebook has said that the company is cooperating to its complete extent with the investigation and said that the DPC is examining how the vulnerability in the social media site led to the leak of phone numbers and personal information of so many users, the spokesperson also said that the vulnerability has now been fixed as well. Facebook has said that the reason why it hasn’t notified its users about its data breach is because the company doesn’t really know which users got their information leaked and it is also up to no use even after telling them because their data has already been leaked online and this cannot be undone.
The EU investigation will also find out if Facebook was legally obliged to tell its users about this or not. The DPC has asked Facebook a number of questions related to this leak and this investigation is under a lot of pressure by the European Commission. Justice commissioner Didier Reynders who says that he is keeping a close tab on this investigation himself.
Last week, the European Union announced that they have started an open investigation regarding the social media site and if Facebook will be found to have broken any of the EU’s laws, then the social media giant would have to pay a huge amount of fine; this can be up to 4% of its $86 billion global revenue. Irelands Data Protection Commission (DPC) has said in a statement that there is a huge possibility that Facebook might have broken some rules. Ireland’s DPC have been put in charge to overlook Facebook’s privacy rules in accordance with the European Union. The reason why Facebook might be in more trouble is also because of the fact that a mishap like this also occurred in 2019, the company to that said that it happened due to a vulnerability and under layed the whole scenario. The company didn’t even pass a public statement to his until this second mishap.
A spokesperson from Facebook has said that the company is cooperating to its complete extent with the investigation and said that the DPC is examining how the vulnerability in the social media site led to the leak of phone numbers and personal information of so many users, the spokesperson also said that the vulnerability has now been fixed as well. Facebook has said that the reason why it hasn’t notified its users about its data breach is because the company doesn’t really know which users got their information leaked and it is also up to no use even after telling them because their data has already been leaked online and this cannot be undone.
The EU investigation will also find out if Facebook was legally obliged to tell its users about this or not. The DPC has asked Facebook a number of questions related to this leak and this investigation is under a lot of pressure by the European Commission. Justice commissioner Didier Reynders who says that he is keeping a close tab on this investigation himself.
