Ireland's data protection authority launched an investigation into Facebook, bringing stringent new European privacy laws to bear on the tech titan after a security breach exposed 50 million accounts.
Wednesday's move comes after the social media firm admitted to the data breach in a blog post last Friday, saying attackers exploited a vulnerability in the website's code in September in a way that could have given them access to people's accounts.
"The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has today, 3 October 2018, commenced an investigation... into the Facebook data breach," a DPC spokesman said in a statement.
"In particular, the investigation will examine Facebook's compliance with its obligation under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security and safeguarding of the personal data it processes."