April 7, 2026

A former worker at Meta is being investigated by police over suspicions he downloaded some 30,000 private Facebook images.

The engineer is believed to have designed a programme to access the personal pictures while avoiding internal security checks, court documents show.

The alleged invasion of Facebook users’ privacy is being investigated by a specialist detective from the Metropolitan Police’s cybercrime unit.
A former Meta engineer in London is under police investigation over suspicions he used a custom program to help himself to roughly 30,000 private Facebook photos while sidestepping the company’s internal security checks, which is a lovely reminder that in Silicon Valley, “protecting user data is our top priority” remains a statement best admired as performance art. Meta says it discovered the improper access more than a year ago, fired the employee, notified users, referred the matter to UK police, and upgraded its security systems, all of which does sound decisively acted upon, in the same way a restaurant looks decisive after discovering the fire a year ago and finally buying a extinguisher. Now a specialist cybercrime detective is on the case, the suspect is on police bail, and everyone involved gets to enjoy the modern corporate ritual in which privacy is violated at industrial scale and then defended with the solemnity of a press release.

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