Facebook faces $1.63 bn in EU fine over fresh data breach
Washington, Oct 1: Embroiled in another massive data breach, Facebook may face $1.63 billion in fine from the European Union (EU) privacy watchdog, the media reported.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Ireland's Data Protection Commission which is Facebook's lead privacy regulator in Europe, has asked Facebook to submit more details in the incident where data of over 50 million users were hacked via "Access Tokens" or digital keys.
The "privacy watchdog could fine Facebook as much as $1.63 billion for the data breach", the report added.
"We are concerned at the fact that this breach was discovered on Tuesday (last week) and affects many millions of user accounts but Facebook is unable to clarify the nature of the breach and the risk for users at this point," the regulator was quoted as saying.
A Facebook spokeswoman said the social media giant will respond to questions from the EU watchdog.
In the biggest-ever security breach after Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook on Friday admitted hackers broke into nearly 50 million users' accounts by stealing their "access tokens" or digital keys.
This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people's accounts.
Access tokens are the equivalent of digital keys that keep people logged in to Facebook so they do not need to re-enter their password every time they use the app.
Senator Mark R. Warner has also called for a full probe into the incident.
Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, Warner said it was high time the Congress stepped up and took action to protect privacy and security of social media users.
Facebook also said it was taking precautionary step to reset access tokens for another 40 million accounts that have been subject to a "View As" look-up in the 2017.
As a result, around 90 million people will now have to log back into Facebook, or any of their apps that use Facebook login.
Reacting to the new data breach, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: "While I'm glad we found this, fixed the vulnerability, and secured the accounts that may be at risk, the reality is we need to continue developing new tools to prevent this from happening in the first place."
Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg have already faced hearings at US Congress over Cambridge Analytica data breach that affected 87 million users.
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Delegation requests for Karnataka HC Bench in coastal districts, hands petition to Chief Justice
Udupi: A delegation of the High Court Bench Struggle Committee met and submitted a petition to the Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru at the Circuit House urging the opening of a High Court Bench in the coastal belt as well as a Mobile High Court Bench in Mangaluru.
MLC and convener of the Committee Ivan D’Souza, who spoke to the Chief Justice on the occasion, explained that the people of the coastal belt find it difficult to travel to Bengaluru to fight a petition in the High Court. The problem only aggravated during monsoon. D’Souza added that there was a delay in clearing the cases of Udupi, Chikkamagaluru and Kodagu districts, which was causing further inconvenience to the people.
The MLC, who pointed out that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had also shown his preference for establishing a High Court Bench in the coastal region, requested for an approval to establish a Mobile High Court Bench first.
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Responding to this request, Chief Justice Bakhru assured to take action on the request as soon as possible.
The delegation included Mangalore Bar Association President Raghavendra HV, Dakshina Kannada Principal Government Pleader MP Noronha, General Secretary Sridhar H, Udupi Bar Association President Reynold Praveen Kumar, General Secretary Chandrashekhar Shetty, Vice-president Devadas V Shettigar and Brahmavar Bar Association President Kadoor Praveen Shetty.
