{"id":111773,"date":"2021-04-08T03:59:44","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T03:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationaus.com\/?p=16987"},"modified":"2021-04-08T03:59:44","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T03:59:44","slug":"privacy-watchdog-probes-facebook-data-dump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/08\/privacy-watchdog-probes-facebook-data-dump\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy watchdog probes Facebook data dump"},"content":{"rendered":"

The privacy watchdog is<\/strong> conducting initial inquiries into the latest Facebook data leak which exposed the personal information of 553 million users, including 7.3 million Australians.<\/p>\n

A user in a low-level hacking forum on Saturday posted personal data of over 500 million Facebook users, including phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical information, according to Business Insider, which first reported the incident<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Security experts warned the private information could be used to improperly access people\u2019s accounts and commit fraud.<\/p>\n

\"Mark
On the radar: Australia’s privacy watchdog is taking an early look at a reported data leak of over 500 million users’ information.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Facebook has sought to downplay the incident, saying the information was \u201cscraped\u201d using a since removed feature to import contacts and \u201cnot through hacking our systems\u201d.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s privacy watchdog, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), told InnovationAus the incident is on its radar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe OAIC is conducting inquiries into the issue reported in the media and seeking to establish the facts and circumstances, including the extent to which the personal information of Australians may have been impacted,\u201d an OIAC spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s defence is the malicious actors obtained the data by \u201cscraping\u201d information from a contact importer tool rather than hacking the platform, and the did not include financial information, health information or passwords.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is another example of the ongoing, adversarial relationship technology companies have with fraudsters who intentionally break platform policies to scrape internet services,\u201d Facebook\u2019s product management director Mike Clarke wrote in a blog post<\/a> on the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of the action we took, we are confident that the specific issue that allowed them to scrape this data in 2019 no longer exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Facebook company post does recommend, however, that users update their settings for how they can be contacted on the platform and conduct a privacy check up, including enabling two factor authentication \u2013 the standard advice following data breaches.<\/p>\n

The OAIC is currently pursuing the social media giant court<\/a> regarding the data breach at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.<\/p>\n

The Commissioner\u2019s case was boosted in September last year when a Federal Court judge ruled she had established a prima facie case that Facebook was carrying on business in Australia, and was collecting and holding personal information in Australia at the relevant time.<\/p>\n

The post Privacy watchdog probes Facebook data dump<\/a> appeared first on InnovationAus<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on InnovationAus<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The privacy watchdog is conducting initial inquiries into the latest Facebook data leak which exposed the personal information of 553 million users, including 7.3 million Australians. A user in a low-level hacking forum on Saturday posted personal data of over 500 million Facebook users, including phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical information,…<\/p>\n

The post Privacy watchdog probes Facebook data dump<\/a> appeared first on InnovationAus<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1916,17623,725,1921,17624],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111774,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111773\/revisions\/111774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}