Facebook's lead EU regulator opens probe into data breach

Facebook’s lead regulator in the European Union, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), on Friday began an investigation into a number of breach notifications received from the social networking site.

“The Irish DPC has received a number of breach notifications from Facebook since the introduction of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) on May 25, 2018,” a spokesman for the commissioner said in a statement, referencing Europe’s new privacy regulations.

“With reference to these data breaches...we have this week commenced a statutory inquiry examining Facebook’s compliance with the relevant provisions of the GDPR.”

Facebook said on Friday it had fixed a bug that may have exposed the private photos of up to 6.8 million users, the latest in a string of glitches that have caused regulators around the world to investigate its practices.