Facebook risks €1.4bn fine after massive hack
FACEBOOK could face a fine of up to €1.4bn after at least 50 million of its accounts were hacked.
Criminals exploited a security flaw to access the accounts, putting huge amounts of sensitive, personal information at risk.
But Facebook only announced the breach on Friday, three days after it happened. It was still not clear yesterday how many Irish accounts had been affected.
As the hunt for the hackers continued, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner – which regulates the web giant’s European data compliance as its EU headquarters are in Dublin – criticised the company, saying: ‘The notification lacks detail.’
The company, co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg, is now bracing itself for a massive fine under new EU data laws that can require firms to pay out up to 4% of their global turnover. Facebook generated €35bn in revenue last year.
The crooks gained access to accounts through Facebook’s ‘view as’ feature which allows users to see what their profiles look like when others view them.
Facebook notified the Data Protection Commissioner of the breach on Friday morning and began logging out users who had been affected. However, the tech giant has not yet said where, geographically, the affected accounts were.
A spokesperson for Facebook said they were still in the early stages of the investigation and would notify those affected.
‘People who have been affected will have to log back in to access their accounts again and we will also notify these people in a message on top of their news feed about what happened.
‘We don’t know the location of all affected people. We also do not know if this was targeted to people from one particular country.’
Facebook bosses will be asked to explain the security breach of 50 million social media accounts before the Oireachtas Committee on Communications.
Fine Gael TD and Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Hildegarde Naughton said she would be writing to the social media company’s senior management in Dublin following a request from her party colleague, Senator Tim Lombard, who discovered during the week that his Facebook account was hacked.
She said: ‘It is quite alarming that Facebook users have suffered such a data breach. It highlights the precarious nature of uploading sensitive or personal content into the trust of social media giants.
‘What security measures are in place for account holders and what is Facebook doing to prevent a future occurrence? These are just some of the questions that we require answers for.’
The Galway West TD said she will be discussing the issue with committee members on Tuesday.
At the weekend, Senator Lombard said: ‘As one of the accounts that was hacked, I personally believe the level of information and disclosure that Facebook has provided their users is appalling. They need to clarify how much information or what kind of data and content the hackers have received.’
The Irish Data Protection Commissioner released a statement on Friday saying it had received a preliminary notification of the breach from the company.
But, it said: ‘The notification lacks detail and the DPC is concerned at the fact that this breach was discovered on Tuesday and affects many millions of user accounts but Facebook is unable to clarify the nature of the breach and the risk for users at this point.
‘The DPC continues to press Facebook to clarify these matters as a matter of urgency.’
‘We do not know if this was targeted’