Date: 13 April 2021
Facebook Provides Users with an Online Form
for Enquiry of the Reports on Suspected Data Breach
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Hong Kong (PCPD), has commenced a compliance check on the reported data breach incident relating to the users of the social media platform Facebook. The PCPD received Facebook’s initial response and noted the public statements published on its platform.
Facebook has responded to the PCPD that its investigations are ongoing but its external security researchers believe that data of approximately 2,937,841 Hong Kong individuals may be included in the dataset. According to Facebook, these numbers are measured by the phone numbers with the international dialing code for Hong Kong (i.e. +852, not necessarily the users’ actual locations) disclosed in the public dataset and have not been validated by Facebook. Facebook further indicated that the data were obtained by malicious actors by scraping publicly accessible information from the Facebook platform prior to September 2019.
The PCPD also notes that Facebook has provided an online contact form[1] in its Help Centre for users to submit enquiries relating to the incident. Users may, among others, raise the following questions with Facebook:-
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Was my information scraped?
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How do I delete my phone number from my Facebook account?
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How do I contact Facebook with an enquiry [regarding the incident]?
The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Hong Kong (Privacy Commissioner), Ms Ada CHUNG Lai-ling, welcomes the provision of the online contact form to users by the social media concerned. The Privacy Commissioner reminds users to make enquiries with the social media concerned via the online contact form if they are concerned that their personal data have been leaked. They may also make enquiries/ complaints to the PCPD (telephone: 2827 2827; email: communications@pcpd.org.hk).
The PCPD will continue to follow up the matter.
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