After the personal data of up to 533 million Facebook users were published, parent company Meta has to pay a 265 million euro fine in Ireland. The sanctions for Meta in the EU state amounted to 910 million euros in the last 14 months.
Irish data protection regulator DPC said on Monday it had completed its investigation, which began in April 2021 after names, phone numbers and email addresses were posted on a hacker forum. The data protection authorities of the other EU members had cooperated with the Irish authority and agreed with their decision.
Facebook will review the verdict
Facebook said it would review the verdict. The criminals would have skimmed (scraped) the publicly available data before September 2019 and then put it online on the platforms. However, Facebook’s systems were not hacked.
It is the fourth time since September 2021 that the Irish Authority has imposed a heavy fine on Meta. At the time, subsidiary WhatsApp had to pay 225 million euros for violations of data protection rules. In March 2022, the parent company was also fined 17 million euros for a data protection violation. In September, the DPC fined Instagram €405 million for serious violations of children’s privacy rules.
Meta appealed both Instagram’s and WhatsApp’s decisions. Now the judges have to decide. A ruling is believed to set a precedent for future data breach investigations. International technology groups such as Meta are a major employer in Ireland. After the network giant decided to cut numerous jobs around the world, hundreds of jobs are at risk.
