According to a report from BBC News, The Data Protection Commission (DPC) in Ireland is reviewing a recent data breach of Facebook which contains the personal data of around 533 million people in 106 countries. Since the data was released online, Facebook has said that it"s from an old leak from 2019 but the DPC wants to work with the firm to ensure this is the case.
Facebook doesn’t look like it’s in much trouble as the DPC’s deputy commissioner Graham Doyle acknowledged that the data appears to be from a previous leak before the GDPR privacy rules came into effect but he did say that the DPC wants to double-check to ensure a new breach hasn’t occurred.
If you’d like to see whether your information was released as part of this data dump, head over to haveibeenpwned which recently added the ability to look up your details in the breach. Information that has been released includes names, phone numbers, genders, dates of birth, location, relationship status, and employer.
Troy Hunt, who runs haveibeenpwned, said that the data could make targeted attacks more potent if a person’s name and country is known as their phone number is easily searchable. He said it was also very helpful to those running spam operations that only rely on using people’s phone numbers. While the data may be old, many people are unlikely to have changed their phone number in just the last two years.