Irish privacy watchdog investigates Twitter data breach involving 5.4 million users

The Irish privacy watchdog Data Protection Commission is launching an investigation into a data breach at Twitter. The email addresses and telephone numbers of around 5.4 million users were made public by hackers.

DPC is investigating whether Twitter has violated some provisions of the GDPR with the data breach of ‘one or more datasets’. If this turns out to be the case, the watchdog can impose a fine on the social media company. Fines for violating these types of privacy rules amount to a maximum of four percent of annual turnover.

The data breach occurred before Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s takeover at the end of October. Earlier this year, Twitter users’ personal data was offered for sale on a hacking forum for $30,000. The data was obtained via an API vulnerability, which was fixed by Twitter in January.

In addition, security expert Chad Loder revealed that even more personal data may have been collected using the previously fixed API bug, such as account names, bios, screen names, Twitter IDs, and verification badges.