- Meta fined €251 million by GDPR
- Facebook was punished for data leakage in 2018
- Ireland’s Data Protection Commission has yet to collect most of fine
Meta receives another GDPR fine, its parent company is Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp A data breach in 2018 exposed about 29 million Facebook accounts worldwide, including 3 million EU users, and the company faced losses of 251 million euros (about $263 million).
irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) The EU has been one of Europe’s leading regulators when it comes to holding technology companies accountable, imposing hefty penalties for GDPR violations, including the largest ever GDPR fine, Meta was also accused of $1.3 billionused for data processing.
The most recent breach involves malicious actors using the “View As” feature, which typically allows users to see what their account looks like to friends and family, to steal access tokens to take over a user’s account.
Millions of users affected
Among the users whose tokens were stolen, the phone numbers and email addresses of 15 million people were leaked, and the username, gender, relationship status and location check-in information of another 14 million people were also leaked. The target 1 million lucky users had no data stolen.
Following the breach, the DPC found that Facebook breached the GDPR because its breach notification did not include sufficient information and did not properly record the facts of the incident. The DPC also found that the company failed to ensure that data protection principles were protected and that Facebook failed to meet its “duty as a controller” to ensure that only necessary personal data was processed.
DPC Commissioner Graham Doyle said: “This enforcement action highlights that failure to establish data protection requirements throughout the design and development cycle can expose individuals to very serious risks and harm, including risks to individuals’ fundamental rights and freedoms. .
This may seem like a hefty fine, and it is, but the reality of these GDPR fines is not what it seems. So far, Only 1% of these DPC fines were collectedso the fine is also likely to be tied to the appeals process indefinitely.