Facebook Could Face Rs 11,866 Crore Fine For Failing To Protect Your Data In Last Week's Hack

As if it wasn't enough how Facebook has been gathering user data and letting companies use it, apparently they can't even secure it properly from malicious sources.

Now, a EU privacy watchdog is fining the social media for letting user data be siphoned off in a breach.

Reuters

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC), the chief privacy regulator for Facebook in Europe, could be penalising the company as much as $1.63 billion for the breach last week that compromised over 50 million users. That depends on if the regulator finds Facebook didn't protect user data as well as it should have in accordance with the recent GDPR law. In addition, it's also demanded more information from the company about the nature and scale of the breach.

The DPC said in an emailed statement it's "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."

So far, Facebook has said it plans to respond to all follow-ups from the DPC and keep them abreast of all internal investigations. The incident however is a serious blow to the social media giant, already reeling from a massive loss of public trust after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as authority scrutiny across the globe.

Reuters

At the very least the move is good for us, especially if the DPC goes through with levying the massive fine against Facebook. Showing them, and other tech giants, that they won't tolerate negligence could go a long way towards them both securing user data better as well as disclosing breaches sooner. All it takes now is for other data protection authorities across the world to also adopt these stringent measures, in order to really tighten the screws.

As of right now, GDPR stipulates that companies that don't do enough to secure user data risk fines of $23 million or 4 percent of of their global annual revenue. In addition, they're required to notify regulators of breaches within 72 hours, under threat of an additional fine of 2 percent of global revenue.

The final decision on the fine could be made in coming months. Someone tell Facebook it needs to get its act together before then.