The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced on Wednesday that it has launched an investigation on behalf of the European Union on the social network Facebook after revealing data breaches by more than 530 million users since 2019.

The regulator, which is on par with French CNL, will try to determine if the American digital giant has complied with its obligations when it comes to data control, the statement said.

Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland, so it is up to the Irish regulator to investigate on behalf of the European Union.

The DPC says it has spoken to Facebook about the incident and may have violated the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which needs to be investigated.

This hacked data was partially published in a hacker forum in early April, when Facebook explained last week that it was the work of “malicious actors”.

This data comes from a leak from 2019 that has been “fixed”, says the group, which urges members to better protect their accounts.

The second biggest data theft

He condemned the practice of “scraping” or looting Facebook profiles by software that mimics the workings of the network, which helps members easily find friends and scrap contact lists.

The Business Insider site found that publishing these phone numbers, addresses, and dates of birth on a hacker forum.

This is not the first time data from the first social network’s 2.8 billion users per month has been put online.

The Cambridge Analytica scam, a British firm that hijacked the personal data of millions of Facebook users for political campaign purposes, was exposed in 2018, permanently tarnishing the social network’s reputation on the issue of data privacy.