After the data leak, Twitter will be investigated by the Irish government

After the data leak, Twitter will be investigated by the Irish government


The Irish Government’s Data Protection Commission has announced an investigation into Twitter after the data of 5.4 million users of the social network were leaked

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC, for its acronym in English) has announced the opening of an investigation into the data leak of 5.4 million users of the Twitter. The regulator wants to know whether the social network has complied with its obligations regarding the retention of user data and whether the rules in force in the European Union have been followed in this case.




After the data leak, Twitter will be investigated by the Irish government

At issue is both the company’s notice to the Irish authorities and the platform’s handling of the leak. According to the DPC, there is reason to believe that Twitter has violated the GDPR, data protection legislation similar to our LGPD, or the Data Protection Act 2018, unique to the UK, a bloc of which Ireland is a part . .

According to the official statement from the Irish government, concerns have arisen following communications between regulators and Twitter about the leak, which went public in July of this year. As stated, there were more than five million compromised users, with emails and phone numbers appearing alongside public information from registered accounts on the social network.

Initially, the volume was shared privately on cybercriminal forums, until it was released free to the web surface in November of this year. Also at the end of last month, a new database has emerged, which would have 17 million entries with even more user information. Since the little shame is nonsense, information about a third leak with 400 million records also surfaced this weekend, the authenticity of which has not yet been confirmed by digital security experts.

While the investigation into the latter case is still ongoing, at least the two previous compromises are allegedly due to a flaw in the Android social networking application’s API. From the vulnerability, attackers were able to scrape Twitter’s public data from databases with phone numbers, associating it with accounts and other information that was made available overtly, but now appears in a set tailored for exposure or scams of phishing and identity theft.

Twitter has not commented on the investigation opened by the Irish government. While the DPC has announced that the work is ongoing, there is no deadline for issuing reports or announcing conclusions, which are only expected to come in 2023.

Source: continuing professional development

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