Former Meta engineer probed over 30,000 private Facebook photos
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A former Meta engineer in London was arrested in November 2025 for allegedly writing a program to extract around 30,000 private Facebook photos while bypassing internal security checks. The case, referred by the FBI to the Metropolitan Police's Cybercrime Unit, highlights the difficulty large tech platforms face managing insider threats. Meta says it discovered the breach over a year ago, dismissed the employee, notified affected users, and upgraded its security systems. The incident adds to Meta's growing record of privacy failures, including a €265m GDPR fine in 2022 over a data scraping incident affecting 533 million users, a €91m fine in 2024 for storing 600 million passwords in plaintext, and a 2026 jury verdict finding Meta negligent in a social media safety case.
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How the breach allegedly workedA company with a long record of security failuresThe insider threat problemSort: