In today’s world, the topic of privacy and data protection is important as the number of internet users grows. The European Union passed legislation that provides people with rights to their data. The General Data Protection Regulation known as GDPR is one of the most famous examples of legislation about data protection and privacy, which was implemented in 2018.
According to GDPR law users which data had been stolen from the company, servers should be informed about it. Moreover, companies that do not respect the duty of keeping users data safe may be forced to pay a monetary penalty.
Facebook owns data of over 2 billion users and is the largest social network globally. As a leader of social media platforms, it should be obligate to introduce a complex system of data protection tools, which would eliminate huge data leaks. Unfortunately, the data protection of Facebook users is flawed, in August 2019 more than 530 million accounts was hacked. As a consequence information such as telephone number, email, address full names had been stolen and recently these data were added to a public database.
In this situation, Facebook should inform users who had been affected by this data breach. However, the Facebook representative informed that the company will not inform users individually about the data breach as the information was public, also no data connected to health or financial information had been stolen.
In July 2019 Facebook has been punished by US Federal Trade Commission for not respecting the law which obligate companies to protect the privacy of their users. Facebook has to pay a $5 billion settlement for the neglect.
Bibliography:
https://backlinko.com/facebook-users
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation