Former Meta Engineer Probed Over 30,000 Private Facebook Photos
A former Meta engineer in London is under criminal investigation after allegedly building a program to extract around 30,000 private Facebook photos while bypassing the platform’s security checks.
The Alleged Breach
- Meta’s Security Systems: Meta’s internal security systems are designed to prevent unauthorized access to user data by its own employees.
- Arrest: A man in his 30s, a former Meta engineer, was arrested in November 2025 on suspicion of unauthorized access to computer material under the Computer Misuse Act. He has since been released on bail and must next report to police in May 2026.
- How the Breach Allegedly Worked: The engineer is believed to have written a program that could pull private images from Facebook accounts while evading Meta’s security checks.
- Discovery and Response: Meta told the BBC that the breach was discovered more than a year ago, after which they dismissed the employee and referred the matter to law enforcement.
Context and Consequences
- Security Failures: This incident adds to a catalogue of privacy and security problems that have plagued Meta for years, leading to significant financial penalties from regulators.
- Regulatory Liability: Despite investing heavily in AI infrastructure expansion throughout 2025, Meta remains burdened by substantial regulatory liability.
In November 2022, Meta was fined €265 million by the Irish Data Protection Commission for a data scraping incident that exposed personal details of up to 533 million Facebook users.