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| Meta was fined €265 million for failing to protect |
The Irish data watchdog has fined Meta €265 million for breaches that led to the leaking of details of more than 500 million users online.
The Data Protection Commission said Facebook's parent company Meta breached two provisions of EU data protection law after details of Facebook users around the world were stolen from public profiles in 2018 and 2019.
The data appeared on a hacked website last year, prompting an investigation by the Data Protection Commission, which oversees metadata across the European Union. The regulator said that a large number of users are from the European Union.
In addition to the fine, the regulator issued a "warning and injunction" requiring Meta to take a specific set of corrective actions within a specified time frame to bring its handling of the issues in line with EU standards.
On the other hand, Meta said in a statement: “We made changes to our system during the affected period, including: preventing feature theft in this way. Unauthorized access to data is unacceptable and against our rules.”
With this penalty, the total amount of fines imposed on Meta by the Data Protection Commission has reached nearly one billion euros since last September.
In September, Meta was fined €405 million for allowing teenagers to create Instagram accounts that publicly display their phone numbers and email addresses, while in March regulators accused Meta of other GDPR breaches with a fine of €17 million. In September last year, WhatsApp was fined 225 million euros for "serious" violations of the General Data Protection Regulation.
In particular, the Data Protection Commission oversees Apple, Google, TikTok and other technology platforms as it is based in the European Union in Ireland. He now has 40 surveys from these companies, 13 of which are META-related.
The Irish regulator said in a statement that other relevant European regulators endorsed Monday's decision, after being provided with a draft decision issued last month under the EU's one-stop shop system for regulating large multinationals.