Facebook Fined $1.63 Billion Over Fresh Data Breach of 50 Million User Accounts

Facebook has been the most controversial companies this year as the social networking giant is in the news for all the bad. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal which shook the entire world, Facebook has confirmed yet another massive data breach on the platform, under which hackers got rid of 50 million user account details including those from India. Now, the privacy watchdog, European Union (EU) is likely to impose a fine of $1.63 billion on Facebook regarding the new data breach. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission which is Facebook’s lead privacy regulator in Europe has asked Facebook to submit more details in the incident where data of over 50 million users were hacked via “Access Tokens” or digital keys.

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The “privacy watchdog could fine Facebook as much as $1.63 billion for the data breach”, the report added. “We are concerned at the fact that this breach was discovered on Tuesday (last week) 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 regulator was quoted as saying.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the social media giant would respond to questions from the EU watchdog, as reported by IANS. In the biggest-ever security breach after Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook on Friday admitted hackers broke into nearly 50 million users’ accounts by stealing their “access tokens” or digital keys.

This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts. Access tokens are the equivalent of digital keys that keep people logged in to Facebook, so they do not need to re-enter their password every time they use the app.