United Kingdom, April 8 -- A former Meta employee has been accused of downloading 30,000 private images from Facebook.

The man, who is under criminal investigation, was employed by the social media giant when it is thought that he designed a programme that enabled him to access the pictures while evading security checks.

A specialist detective from the Metropolitan Police's cybercrime unit is investigating the alleged invasion of Facebook users' privacy.

Meta explained that the suspected breach had been discovered over a year ago and the company itself had referred the matter to the police.

It added that the affected Facebook users had been notified, the suspect had been sacked from his role and it had upgraded its security systems. ...