Meta fined by Irish regulators amidst privacy concerns
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Summary:
- Meta has frequently been the target of privacy regulators around the world.
- Irish privacy authorities announced a fine for Meta.
Meta fined by Ireland’s privacy authority
Ireland's privacy authority has fined Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, €265 million for its treatment of user data, bringing the total amount the technology giant has been fined by European regulators to close to €1 billion. The Irish Data Protection Commission's announcement of the fine on Monday brings to a close an investigation that began in April of last year after information about more than 500 million Facebook and Instagram users was posted online. Since the company's European headquarters are located in Dublin, Ireland's data watchdog frequently leads the charge in Europe. Meta has frequently been the target of privacy regulators around the world.
The most recent punishment is a further setback for Meta, which earlier this month let go more than 11,000 employees as it restructured its operations in response to a decrease in revenues and intense competition from rivals like TikTok. From $10.39 billion the year before, Meta's net income decreased to $6.69 billion. The Irish fine is related to a feature that allows users to import contacts from their phones into the Facebook or Instagram app in order to find friends and acquaintances.
2019 saw the publication on a hacking forum of the personal information of 533 million people from 106 different countries, including names, addresses, and some email addresses. The vulnerability on this feature, where data could be gathered by outside parties through a procedure called scraping, was later fixed by Facebook.
Companies who violate the bloc's privacy laws risk fines of up to 4% of their global revenue. Other countries have pursued privacy violations as well. The largest ever fine for violating the EU's GDPR regulations was levied against Amazon last year by Luxembourg, who fined the company €746 million for violating data privacy laws.
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Sources: finance.yahoo.com, ft.com
