The Japanese government has decided to issue Facebook Inc. an order to improve the way it protects its users' personal data, sources in the government said Monday.
The move will mark the first time the Japanese government's Personal Information Protection Commission will issue this kind of warning to Facebook Inc. and comes in the wake of a massive data breach found earlier this year.
The breach affected the personal data of 87 million of the social media giant's users across the world, with more than 100,000 possibly being affected in Japan.
The data breach involved London-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, who in spring was found with information from Facebook users that might, in 2016, have been used by U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign body.
Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission will, henceforth, insist that Facebook address the problem in sufficient detail and respond to the problem appropriately.
The commission wants Facebook, in addition, to fully communicate the problem with the users and delete any data that may have been illegitimately used during and after the breach.
The commission, separately, will also order the Facebook, also owner of the photo and video-sharing social networking service Instagram, to launch a probe and reveal exactly why private information from 29 million users was able to be stolen by hackers in a separate case in September.
The commission has the authority to issue government sanctioned orders and instructions as per relevant laws.
