Facebook, the social media giant is set to face a fine of up to £1.25 billion after revealing that 50 million user accounts were compromised on Tuesday 25 September, with affected users being notified via their Facebook accounts.

This recent data breach has been established as the largest security breach Facebook have faced. It is also one of the more severe breaches, as the hackers obtained “access tokens”, which are a form of security key allowing users to browse Facebook on numerous devices without entering a password.

Obtaining these “access tokens” allowed the hackers to gain full access to a user’s account, including third party applications.

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the security breach, stating:

Three Graces Legal is a commercial law firm which has many years' experience in dealing with civil claims for compensation, including large commercial dispute matters. We also deal with claims arising out of breach of the Data Protection Act and GDPR.

Our specialist data protection claims solicitor, Aaron Pearson, is a GDPR practitioner and the firm has acquired the standard of ISO17024 for GDPR practitioner and Cyber Essentials.

We make compensation claims on behalf of individuals and businesses who have been adversely affected by a breach of the Data Protection legislation. 

We offer a wide-range of funding arrangements, including been able act for you under a no win, no fee agreement.

We are specialists in pursuing civil claims for a breach of the Data Protection legislation. The law is constantly evolving to keep up with such a changing landscape, particularly where data is concerned. More than ever, we have to ensure that we remain vigilant, while organisations who collect and process our data must take measures to avoid a breach, otherwise they may be faced with a claim for compensation.

Compliance with data protection law, and moreover, the GDPR, is vital. We act for many businesses in advising them how to stay compliant so as to avoid any unwanted legal proceedings for breach of data protection laws. Equally, we act for individuals who have suffered some harm as a result of a data protection breach.

Three Graces Legal have seen how the changes arising from the existing Data Protection Act 1998, which was usurped by the European Directive, enabling a person to claim compensation for distress alone, has developed to be written into the General Data Protection Regulation. This now enables an individual to rely on a binding EU Regulation to claim compensation for distress arising out of a data breach.   

Following Google’s announcement this week (8 October 2018) regarding a data breach in 2015, they have temporarily shut down their social network Google+, where a security bug enabled third party developers to gain access to user data, potentially affecting around 496, 951 Google+ users.

The announcement on Monday was the first time Google discussed the breach, which although occurred three years ago, was not exposed and remedied until March 2018. Google’s reasoning for late exposure was relayed in an internal memo, which discussed the avoidance of “regulatory interest”, and potential comparisons to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The bug may have allowed third party developers to gain access to usernames, email, gender, data of birth, location, pictures, as well as occupation and relationship status. However, there is no concrete evidence to confirms this (as Google only holds API data for two weeks) therefore they cannot determine how many users were exposed. Google have advised that there was “no evidence that any profile data was misused” as well as there being “no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API”.