Turkey fines Facebook over data breach of over 280,000 users

Turkey on Thursday fined social media company Facebook for over US$281,000 for a data breach that exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of users in Turkey.

Facebook exposed the name, gender, birthday, relationship status, educational background, religion, hometown, personal data and location information of 280,959 users, said the Personal Data Protection Authority, Turkey's watchdog agency for data privacy.

Facebook was fined US$201,865 for the breach, and nearly US$79,000 for failing to provide notice of the breach.

A statement on Personal Data Protection Agency's website said that the Facebook representative sent to the institution on Oct. 14, 2018 by e-mail about the data breach caused by an error occurred as a result of the interaction with one of the features of the social networking site.

The company noted that written information will be submitted to the Personal Data Protection Board within the following week, and the board decided to investigate into the case.

As a result of the review, the board determined that the data breach was caused by an error in the interaction of three different features of the Facebook system, namely "see-through the eyes of someone else" "birthday celebrator" and "video uploader."

In May, the Personal Data Protection Authority fined Facebook US$289,566 over a previous data breach.

In June, the United States fined Facebook US$5 billion for privacy violations, the largest ever fine imposed by the Federal Trade Commission on a tech company.