It almost seems as if Facebook has been quiet for too long again, when the group is again shaken by a data protection problem. This time, however, it is not users who are affected, but employees of the social network, reports the "Bloomberg" news agency.
Accordingly, several hard drives were stolen from an employee, on which personal data of Facebook employees was stored. Apparently, this was primarily salary information for a total of 29,000 people employed by Facebook in 2018. The records included the names of the employees, their bank details, salary ratings, bonus payments, share information and the last four digits of the social security numbers.
According to a company statement, the hard drives were stolen from an employee's car. Accordingly, it was common burglary in which the perpetrator stole a bag from an employee's car, in which the hard drives were located.
No users affected
The break-in already took place on November 17 and the company found out about it on November 20. According to a company spokeswoman, there is no evidence of misuse of the data stored unencrypted on the hard drives. One therefore assumes an ordinary theft and not an action with the aim of stealing employee data.
Nevertheless, the employees concerned were informed and offered free prevention measures against identity theft and monitoring of their credit card payments. Remarkable: In its statement, the company expressly points out that only current and former employee data, but no user data, was stored on the hard drives.
In any case, the employee from whose vehicle the hard drives were stolen shouldn't have taken the data storage with them at all. "We have taken reasonable disciplinary action," said a Facebook spokeswoman. However, she did not want to explain the nature of these measures.
