Facebook faces $1.6 billion fine and formal investigation from Irish Data Protection Commission over massive data breach

The Irish Data Protection Commission has opened a formal investigation into a data breach that affected nearly 50 million Facebook accounts, which could result in a fine of up to $1.63 billion. The breach, which was discovered by Facebook engineers on Sept 24, gave hackers the ability to take over users’ accounts. It was patched on Sept 27, the company said. “The investigation will examine Facebook’s compliance with its obligation under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security and safeguarding of the personal data it processes,” the commission said. The commission noted that Facebook had informed the commission that its internal investigation was continuing and that the company continued “to take remedial actions to mitigate the potential risk to users”.