Exploiting a security vulnerability, a forum containing the personal information of 533 million users, including phone number, birth information, place of residence, workplace and email address, was obtained and published by the forum.
More than half a billion are affected from 106 countries, with over 32 million users in the US, 11 million in the UK, and 6 million in India. The data includes phone number, Facebook ID, full name, place of residence, date of birth, business card, and in some cases, email address.
The leaked data also contains personal information of 377,000 Hungarian users. Of those implicated in the data leak, 208 work in a ministry, 108 in the police, 294 in the armed forces, and 14 in parliament. Data from 2,177 hospital workers, 394 outpatient employees and 1,231 office workers were also published on the Internet, and 48 judges, 455 law office employees and 12 plaintiffs participated in the data leakage. Among the Hungarian users, 180,000 men, 167,000 women and 30,000 did not indicate any gender. Regarding marital status, most of them, a total of 108,000 people are married, 30,000 people live in relationships and 25,000 are unmarried. Also, 217 thousand records were recorded, most of the Hungarian users live abroad in Germany, and 1709 people, then in England, with the number of 832 people. The email addresses of 6,226 users have also been published on the Internet.
Digital Rights Ireland requires relevant EU citizens Join the class-action lawsuit against the tech giant, Which may be the largest in this category. The civil rights organization has filed a complaint with the Data Protection Committee and is now preparing to take legal action in Irish courts on behalf of those affected by the violation.
According to DRI, those involved in the case can receive compensation between € 300 and € 12,000.
An adviser to the European Court of Justice said in a recommendation: We wrote in January of this year that data protection authorities in every European Union country can individually prosecute Facebook, even though the company is based in Ireland. Earlier, the company that operates the community website rejected the legal action of the Belgian authorities on the grounds that it was headquartered in Dublin, so the Irish data protection authority was competent. In response, Michel Popek, an advisor to the European Court of Justice, issued a recommendation that any member state has the right to file a data protection lawsuit against the company.
Cover photo: © 2018 SOPA Images, Getty Images
