In response to a data breach that exposed the personal information of more than 500 million Facebook users, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta $275 million on Monday. The Irish authority, tasked with upholding EU privacy legislation, has fined Meta more than $945 million since last October.
The DPC announced the fine in a statement, noting that between May 2018 and September 2019, several Facebook and Instagram search tools provided to third-party developers by Meta were used to collect user personal information, including email addresses, locations, and phone numbers.
According to a story published by Insider in April of last year, 553 million individuals across 106 countries were impacted, with their data ending up on a “hacker forum.” The DPC started its inquiry soon after the report’s release.
The DPC’s decision comes two months after it assessed a $420 million fine against Meta for improper handling of the data of minor Instagram users and eight months after it assessed a $17 million fine against the tech giant for prior data breaches. Additionally, the DPC levied a $233 million fine against the company in October for transparent transgressions involving its WhatsApp messaging service.
Since last October, the DPC has penalized Meta a total of $945 million, but this represents less than 1% of the company’s 2021 sales. The watchdog is presently looking into Meta’s actions with 13 further enquiries.
Ireland is home to the majority of the world’s largest IT companies, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter, in large part due to the low corporation tax rate in the EU member state. Therefore, it is the DPC’s responsibility to make sure that these businesses abide by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a comprehensive privacy regulation adopted by the EU in 2018.
The DPC has been criticized for acting slowly. In a report released by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties last year, it was discovered that the DPC had not yet taken any action in 98% of the GDPR cases that Ireland had been referred. The account stated that Ireland’s failure to deliver draft decisions on significant cross-border cases had paralyzed EU GDPR enforcement against Big Tech.
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