Turkey fines Facebook $282,000 over privacy breach

Turkey fined social media giant Facebook 1.6 million Turkish liras (more than AED 1 million) over a data breach that affected nearly 300,000 people.

It said personal information, including names, dates of birth, search history, educational background, religion, location and more, of 280,959 Turkish users were left exposed.

The Personal Data Protection Board (KVKK), a Turkish watchdog agency, said their probe revealed that the social media giant had failed to set up "necessary administrative and technical measures set out by law to prevent this data breach".

It did not specify what had happened to their stolen data. 

The KVKK had previously fined Facebook 1.65 million lira (over AED 1 million) over another privacy breach incident.  

This comes as the firm faces a lawsuit in the US for allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access users' data.