Turkey Fines Facebook over Data Breach
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK) said it has fined Facebook a total of 1.65 million lira ($270,976.01) for a data breach last year that affected around 300,000 users across the country.
It cited a Facebook statement from December as saying the company had discovered a photo API bug that allowed third-party applications to access Facebook user photos, Reuters reported.
KVKK said that around 300,000 users in Turkey may have been affected by this data breach. It also said that the API bug occurred for 12 days in September last year and Facebook not intervening in time showed there were deficiencies in technical precautions regarding the issue.
According to RT, The fine itself comes in two parts, with one million lira (some $164,000) for failure to react in time to fix the issue, and the rest for not notifying Turkish authorities as soon as possible after discovering the bug.
While the data breach in question was quite big, it’s not the worst one that has plagued the social media giant recently. Last September, the company admitted that hackers had accessed the data of 29 million of its users. Some 15 million had their names and contact details exposed, while a further 14 million had even more private details exposed.