Tensions rise as Meta breaks privacy laws. The Irish Data Protection Commission has fined Meta €265 million. This is over claims that the company violated the privacy of its customers.

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According to the privacy watchdog, the parent corporation of Facebook and Instagram failed to protect the data of more than half a billion users. Potentially putting a significant proportion of people affected at considerably greater risk of frauds like identity theft in the future.

The information was released. It includes phone numbers, birth dates, email addresses, and locations for over 533 million Facebook members across 106 countries. With over 32 million of those users from the US and 11 million from the UK.

 

Meta breaks privacy laws: which laws did Meta really break?

The regulator claimed in a statement that Meta had broken the GDPR requirement for “Data Protection by Design and Default.” The regulator has jurisdiction over Meta because the firm has its European headquarters there.

The regulator’s judgment will require Meta to “bring its processing into compliance. This is done, however, by adopting a range of specified remedial activities within a defined deadline.” In addition to the substantial penalties. Meta still has the option to challenge the fine in an Irish court.

The firm made adjustments to its “systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers,” a spokeswoman for Meta stated in response to the revelation.

“Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and in violation of our policies, and we will keep collaborating with our peers to address this industry concern,” they added.

Significant fines from EU authorities are nothing new for Meta. In September 2021, WhatsApp was penalized €225 million for transparency violations.

Instagram was punished with an even larger fine of €405 million in September 2022 because of how the social media platform handled kid users’ data.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) imposed a €17 million fine against Meta in March 2022 for a series of past data breaches dating back to 2018.

Naysblog will keep you posted on how this case and the situation unfolds.