The Irish regulator said on Friday it was conducting a search on Facebook Inc. after the company revealed that an error may have exposed private photos of 6,8 million users.
Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), Facebook's top regulator in the European Union, said it is investigating whether the company complied with tough new regulations protectionof the EU's privacy policy, following the announcement of the latest breach.
Facebook of course stated that it is in close contact with the Irish regulator and will be happy to answer any questions.
Facebook revealed the photo leak on Friday, saying it allowed about 1.500 applications have access to private photos for 12 days, until September 25th.
"We are sorry this happened," Facebook said in a blog post developers.
European data protection legislation requires the Companies to report any data breach within 72 hours, giving regulators the power to impose fines of up to 4% of annual gross revenue.
Facebook has said it will alert all users whose photos may have leaked.
The problem naturally undermines Facebook's efforts to assure users and regulators that it has enhanced security, according to many internet analysts.
"We already have a lot of evidence to support the view that Facebook is arrogant, prioritizing growth over other factors," said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research.
Any new reporting of errors and breaches increases the possibility of government surveillance with special rules on Facebook, said George Salmon, Hargreaves Lansdown analyst.
"Facebook is reasonably trying to regain the trust of its users, but this effort will not work if stories like this continue to emerge," said Salmon.
The bug affected users who enabled certain third-party apps access in their photos.
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