A former Meta employee suspected of downloading around 30,000 private images of Facebook users is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police.

The engineer, who lives in London, is believed to have designed a program that allows access to personal pictures on the site while bypassing security checks.

A Meta spokesperson told the BBC the breach was discovered over a year ago, after which the firm said it immediately fired the suspected employee and "referred the matter to law enforcement".

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said a man in his 30s was arrested in November 2025 on suspicion of unauthorised access to computer material.

He has since been released on bail and must next report to the police in May, according to the Press Association.

The incident is being investigated by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Cybercrime Unit, after the force received a referral from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US.

Meta added that it had notified the Facebook users whose images had been downloaded and had since upgraded its security systems.

The breach is the latest security issue to emerge from the Facebook parent company.

In November 2022, it was fined €265m (£228m) by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for a breach that led to the publication of the personal details of hundreds of millions of Facebook users.

Meanwhile, in September 2024, the DPC found Meta to have inadvertently stored certain passwords of social media users on its internal systems without encryption, and fined it €91m (£75m).

The company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has also faced recent legal battles over the addictive design of its apps.

In March, jurors in California found both Meta and the owner of YouTube, Google, had intentionally built addictive social media platforms that harmed the mental health of a young woman.

The woman, known as Kaley, was awarded $6m (£4.5m) in damages.

Meta and Google said they disagreed with the verdict and intended to appeal.