Meta employee accused of downloading 30,000 private user images
London’s cybercrime unit is investigating a former Meta employee who allegedly downloaded more than 30,000 images of private users from personal Facebook pages.
Police say the employee, an engineer at the company, designed a script that allowed his activity to go undetected by internal security systems, according to court documents reviewed by The Guardian.
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The incident was discovered by the company more than a year ago, Meta said in a statement to the BBC. In addition to terminating the employee, Meta notified affected Facebook users and updated its security protocols. Meta then took the matter to British police and authorities arrested the man in November.
Crushable speed of light
“After discovering improper access by an employee more than a year ago, we immediately terminated this individual, warned users, took the matter to law enforcement and increased our security measures,” the company told reporters. “We are cooperating with the ongoing investigation.”
Meta has previously been accused of failing to adequately inform users of privacy policies and how the company accesses their data, including recent concerns about Meta AI chatbot prompts being made publicly visible.
Last month, an investigation found that offshore Meta workers in Kenya were forced to review personal recordings taken by wearers of Meta Ray-Ban glasses – videos that were shared without users’ knowledge to train the company’s AI. In January, a group of international plaintiffs and whistleblowers filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that private WhatsApp conversations, which were end-to-end encrypted, were being viewed and analyzed by Meta employees. The company denied the allegation.
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