International

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) has opened a formal investigation into the data breach at Facebook that affected nearly 50 million accounts.

On Tuesday, the data protection watchdog said it was looking into whether to open an official probe and on Wednesday decided to do so.

"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," the Irish DPC said in a statement on Wednesday.

Facebook said last week that it found a bug in a part of its service that allowed hackers to access information of nearly 50 million people. Less than 10 percent of those accounts were in the European Union (EU), according to the Irish DPC.