Massive Facebook data breach affecting millions of Canadians was not reported to federal privacy watchdog

The Liberal government has come under some criticism for dragging its feet on legislation it tabled in the fall to strengthen and reform its private-sector privacy law

The federal privacy commissioner’s office hasn’t heard from Facebook regarding a massive global data leak that looks to have included 3.49 million Canadian accounts, and is “actively following up with the company,” according to a spokesperson.

Over the weekend, a cybersecurity expert revealed that data relating to 533 million Facebook accounts worldwide had been leaked online. Alon Gal, the chief technology officer of cybersecurity company Hudson Rock, said the leaked database includes information about users’ phone numbers, past and current locations, birthdates, relationship statuses, bios and, in some cases, email addresses.

Gal said 3.49 million Facebook users in Canada were affected. Canada’s privacy law requires organizations to report breaches to the federal privacy commissioner, and notify affected individuals, for breaches “involving personal information that pose a real risk of significant harm to individuals.”

“It sounds like it’s the recurrence of an earlier leak, in that this is a copy of data that was part of an earlier data breach” and that information has now been “up and posted on the dark web,” Teresa Scassa, the Canada research chair in information law and policy at the University of Ottawa, said in an interview.

Facebook did not…

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