Facebook faces lawsuit over alleged data breach

The Irish Data Protection Commission is going to launch an investigation into a data leak in which the details of hundreds of millions of Facebook users were published online.

It had previously been looking into claims from Facebook that the data was old, from a previously reported leak in 2019. But now it says that there could have been a breach of data laws, reports BBC.

Facebook said it was "cooperating fully".

In a statement, the firm said the inquiry "relates to features that make it easier for people to find and connect with friends on our services".

It added, "These features are common to many apps and we look forward to explaining them and the protections we have put in place."

The Irish regulator is a key one in such investigations as Facebook's European headquarters are in Dublin.

Earlier this month, the dataset of 533 million people from 106 countries were published on a hacking forum, although the data had initially been scraped from Facebook some years earlier.