Facebook faces a fine of $1.63 billion for recent security breach

Facebook (FB) faces the possibility of a $1.63-billion fine in the European Union over its most recent security breach that affected 50 million accounts, said a report by the Wall Street Journal. On Friday, the company revealed that hackers exploited weaknesses in the “View As” option to steal access tokens from 50 million accounts enabling them to take over user profiles.

Facebook said it reset the tokens of the affected users and updated the security of another 40 million accounts. All 90 million users have been notified of the breach. It is not clear if the hackers tried to glean private data from the profiles but they did try to hack data from the company’s systems.

Facebook has not been able to figure out how much third-party apps have been affected and the attack was said to be so complex that there is a chance the company may never find out the perpetrators.

Under the General Data Privacy Regulation, 4% of the company’s worldwide annual revenue for the previous year can be extracted as a penalty

Regulators in the European Union raised concerns over Facebook’s lack of clarity about the breach that came to light on Tuesday. Under the General Data Privacy Regulation, in such cases, 4% of the company’s worldwide annual revenue for the previous year can be extracted as a penalty.

In the US, where there is no GDPR, there is a less chance of facing a fine. In the light of the Cambridge Analytica incident and other such data security issues, Facebook appears to be rapidly losing the trust of its users.

If the latest data incident leads to people reducing their usage of the platform or moving to other alternatives, it could hurt the company’s revenues and profits significantly. The stock was down about 1.5% during the final hour of Monday’s trading session.

Hacker on the prowl to ‘view’ FB profiles; 50 million users affected