A couple of days ago, Facebook disclosed that it had been hit by a massive breach, where as many as 50 millions accounts were said to be affected. The time for repercussions has arrived and first among the people hounding for Facebook’s blood, is the European Union. According to the Irish Data Protection Commission, under 5 million accounts belonged to the European Union. However, that is not stopping factions from within the EU from calling for serious punishment. From what we have heard, Facebook could end up paying up to $1.63 billion in fines. To put things into perspective, this would constitute around 4 percent of its $40.7 billion global revenue, for the last financial year.
Releasing a statement on the topic, Facebook said:
We’re working with regulators including the Irish Data Protection Commission to share preliminary data about Friday’s security issue. As we work to confirm the location of those potentially affected, we plan to release further info soon.
The European Union has cracked down hard on what it sees as a blatant disregard for public data. Post GDPR, companies have the threat of heavy fines hanging over them. EU has been known to fire off fines in the hundreds of millions and above at enterprises of late, and unless Facebook can prove otherwise, it will find itself coughing up as well.
Meanwhile, further details are awaited regarding how much data was stolen from, and what use hackers can put it to. Once the scale of the damage is known, we can then expect the EU and federal agencies from other regions to come calling.
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