Facebook innovates in the leak of personal data. When it is not the data of its users that leaks, it is that of its employees. This time it was not the work of a hacker or an online storage error, but a car burglary. In total, the information of 29,000 American Facebook employees was stolen.
The data was on hard drives that were in the car of an employee of the group’s human resources department. They, therefore, include very sensitive information such as names. Along with social security numbers, salaries, bank account numbers or bonuses received by Facebook employees. Access to this type of information, therefore, poses serious risks of fraud, in particular, identity theft.
They contained payment info for around 29,000 current and former workers
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Although the incident does not seem to have any serious consequences for the moment. It once again tarnishes Facebook’s reputation for data protection. One can indeed wonder how and especially why the hard disks of the payroll department of the company ended up in the car of an employee. Facebook says it has taken disciplinary action against the owner of the burglarized car and adds that no user data was included in the hard drives.
It is worth to mention that according to Business Insider, Facebook had developed a facial recognition application that could identify the users of the social network in just a few seconds. The app has not been in use since then, but the very existence of this app remains disturbing. Especially when you know the liabilities of the largest social network in the world.