The National Privacy Commission (NPC) said it is currently validating information that over 879,699 Facebook accounts of Filipino netizens that are allegedly compromised as part of the large-scale breach affecting 533 million global users in the social media platform.
In a statement, NPC was quoting initial information showing data breaches that include phone numbers, full names, location, e-mail addresses, and biographical information of users across various countries.
The NPC immediately reached out to Facebook’s Philippine Data Privacy Officer to gather more information on the matter.
“As we await more answers, we highly encourage Facebook users to be more cautious online. We reiterate the need for the regular changing of passwords and the activation of two-step authentication of accounts to safeguard their personal information,” the NPC said.
NPC assured the public that the NPC is on top of this matter.
This is not the first time that NPC was investigating the world’s most popular social media platform.
In April 2018, the privacy watchdog opened an investigation on Facebook following Mark Zuckerberg’s admission of the company’s faults in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal that affected Filipino Facebook users.
In a formal letter addressed to Zuckerberg, the NPC required Facebook to submit a number of documents relevant to the case, to establish the scope and impact of the incident to Filipino data subjects.
In September 2020, NPC called for a deeper probe on Facebook’s proposed preventive actions regarding the proliferation of suspicious accounts as such activities on the platform continue to threaten the personal data privacy and other security-related rights of its Filipino users.
According to Facebook, they “removed two separate networks for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB). One of these networks originated in China and the other in the Philippines.” Under the network that originated in the Philippines, they “removed 57 Facebook accounts, 31 Pages and 20 Instagram accounts for violating our policy against foreign or government interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity.”
NPC asked again for Facebook’s compliance with laws, rules, and regulations under its jurisdiction.