Facebook Data Breach

    One of the most pressing issues regarding data leaks is people's personal information on social media. This article, from Business Insider, addressed the recent Facebook data breach this past weekend. On Saturday, Facebook was hacked, again, and this time the information from over 500 million accounts was exposed to the public. The leak released “their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses.” 

    This is the largest data breach that Facebook has ever seen, and we all know they’ve seen plenty within the past 5 years. In 2018 the information of over 50 million accounts was leaked. The leak this weekend was particularly bad because the information was posted on public forums which have now been shared on more social media sites. The amount of data that is possessed not only by Facebook but millions of other companies need to be under much better protection in today's online world. In 2015 Facebook had a scandal with Cambridge Analytica which collected and sold data of Facebook users regarding their political stances. The Facebook leaders were warned about the issue but still refused to stop the leak and eventual whistleblowing that followed. In 2018 the EU instituted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which forces any company that has clients in the EU to follow certain laws regarding the protection and use of that data. Companies are must delete client’s personal information if the client tells them, they want that done, but it also puts a stricter penalty on companies when their data is leaked or if companies attempt to sell that data. If the US had something like this it would give businesses more of a reason to protect the data, they collect since the penalties would be greater. As it stands companies such as Google and Facebook receive hardly any backlash when their users’ data is leaked apart from their clients. Companies aren’t fined or reprimanded at all after a situation like this past weekend. Most of the time it simply gets swept under the rug and people forget about it about a few weeks but of course, all of that data is still out in the open and can never be deleted so it’s very much a threat to everyone involved. Sometimes the company won’t even make a statement or mention that there is any issue regarding their data protection in the first place. Within the past 5 years, Facebook has only made 1 statement after their databases were hacked. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/stolen-data-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaked-online-2021-4