A former worker at Meta is under criminal investigation on suspicion of downloading about 30,000 private Facebook images.<\/p>\n
He was employed by the social media company when it is believed he designed a program to be able to access the pictures while avoiding internal security checks.<\/p>\n
A specialist detective from the Metropolitan police\u2019s cybercrime unit is investigating the alleged invasion of Facebook users\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n
Meta told the Press Association that the suspected breach had been discovered more than a year ago and that the company itself had referred the matter to police in the UK.<\/p>\n
It added that affected Facebook users had been notified, the suspect had been sacked and it had upgraded its security systems.<\/p>\n
The man under suspicion, who lives in London, is on police bail while the criminal investigation continues.<\/p>\n
According to court papers seen by the Press Association, police say he \u201cis alleged to have accessed and downloaded approximately 30,000 private images belonging to Facebook users whilst working for Meta\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is alleged that he created a script designed to circumvent Meta\u2019s internal detection systems, allowing him to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, two magistrates agreed to vary the man\u2019s police bail so that he must next report to Met officers in May and inform the force of any plans for foreign travel.<\/p>\n
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the existence of the criminal investigation, saying: \u201cAfter discovering improper access by an employee over a year ago, we immediately terminated the individual, notified users, referred the matter to law enforcement and enhanced our security measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are co-operating with the ongoing investigation.\u201d It added that protecting user data was its top priority.<\/p>\n
Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, suffered a landmark court defeat alongside Google last month after being accused of failing to protect its users from harm.<\/p>\n
A court in Los Angeles found the companies liable for a woman\u2019s childhood social media addiction, in a ruling which could have widespread ramifications for the way the platforms are operated in the future.<\/p>\n
Jon Baines, a senior data protection specialist at the law firm Mishcon de Reya, said: \u201cWhen an employee accesses personal data, such as images of customers, without the employer\u2019s authorisation, there is the potential for offences under data protection and computer misuse laws to be committed by that employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe general approach will be that, provided the employer \u2013 here, Meta \u2013 has appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to prevent, or at least detect, the unauthorised access, it will not itself be liable: the law doesn\u2019t seek to punish responsible organisations for the actions of rogue employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat said, if the information commissioner \u2013 or a court \u2013 were to decide that Meta had not had appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to protect customer data, then Meta (or another organisation in similar circumstances) might potentially be liable to significant fines, or to legal claims for damages.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO) said: \u201cWe are aware of this incident \u2026 Social media users should be able to trust that their personal information is handled responsibly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former worker at Meta is under criminal investigation on suspicion of downloading about 30,000 private Facebook images.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-518102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}