Turkey Slaps Facebook With $270,000 Fine Over Users’ Photo Privacy Breach

Turkey’s Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK) said on Friday that it had fined Facebook a total of 1.65 million lira (about $270,000 ) in April due to a data breach that the social media giant reported last year

ANKARA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik – ) Turkey‘s Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK) said on Friday that it had fined Facebook a total of 1.65 million lira (about $270,000 ) in April due to a data breach that the social media giant reported last year.

According to KVKK, up to 300,000 Facebook users in Turkey might have had their privacy compromised due to a bug, which Facebook said in December had given third-party applications access to all of the company‘s users’ photographs between September 13-25, 2018.

The agency also said that it had reached out to Facebook but did not receive a reply. On April 11, it decided to fine the media giant 1 million lira for failing to react in time to fix the issue and another 550,000 lira for failing to respond to the Turkish agency’s inquiry.

Facebook has come under the spotlight in several privacy scandals. In March 2018, it was revealed that the UK Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm used Facebook data to influence the US 2016 presidential election. Then, in September of that year, a Facebooksecurity issue allowed hackers to access around 50 million accounts of the company‘s users, following which the social media giant’s stocksplummeted by around 2.5 percent