Digital Rights Ireland Hoping To Secure Compensation For Irish Facebook Users Affected By Data Breach

Friday, 16 April 2021 12:53

A legal case is being brought against the social media company after people's personal information was leaked

The names, emails and phone numbers of over 500 million people in more than 100 countries was among the information published on a hacking forum earlier this month.

That includes around 1.5 million Facebook users in Ireland.

The online privacy group is hoping to secure hundreds of millions of euro in compensation for Irish Facebook users affected by a recent data breach.

Digital Rights Ireland is now encouraging those caught up in the leak to join a legal case it's bringing to sue Facebook for damages.

Antoin O'Lachnain from the group says the level of compensation could be significant if the case is successful:

"Going by cases that have occurred in the past, it could be anywhere between 100 euro per person to the low thousands of euros per person. So for say, close to a million complainants in Ireland, a million people have been affected by this, this could be hundreds of millions of euros potentially."