Meta Hit With Huge Penalty Fine For Breaching European Data Protection Law

Meta is in deep trouble as the tech giant recently received a huge penalty for breaking the data protection law of Europe.

The fine worth $275 million (or €265 million) was recently announced by the DPC in Ireland where the tech giant’s regulator for GDPR operates and oversees such situations.

Today, the DPC confirmed how such decisions would end up recording findings related to the infringement of various articles linked to data protection.

The DPC claims it’s imposing a long list of measures that would allow for compliance and bring forward so many remedial actions situated during a certain timeframe.

This penalty was related to one inquiry that had been put forward by this regulating body in the previous year. This had to do with media reports comprising 530 million Facebook users’ data and it spoke about their email IDs and mobile numbers getting leaked publicly.

At this time, Facebook tried to act smart and play down such accusations with claims that the data wasn’t floating online and was old. They even mentioned how the news was old and the matter had already been fixed. Therefore, they confirmed that no such data was now getting exposed.

This firm then followed this with another statement that mentioned how the data was being breached through the acts of malicious actors that used contract importers.

On the other hand, the DPC mentioned how its inquiry saw a number of different contact searches and tools for importing that the firm offered between both the date of the GDPR and the date at which changes were taking place.

There were a lot of things worth considering regarding how comprehensive this entire inquiry process is in the European Union. The supervisory authorities did agree with this decision and a lot of spotlights was put on poor decision-making on Meta’s part. They were given a deadline of three months to comply with such issues.

Meta was soon contacted to see their response on the matter. And while one spokesperson failed to confirm if the tech would be seeking an appeal or not, it’s clear that Meta is going to be taking its time for a decision review.

Meta did release a statement in this regard. They feel that protecting the privacy as well as the security of its users is super important. This is why they’ve really worked hard and cooperated with the DPC of Ireland on this critical matter.

They’ve made plenty of changes in this system and that entails removing this ability to erase features through phone numbers. While data scraping through unauthorized means is not correct, they do add it’s against their policy too and that’s why they’re hoping to work alongside others to have it done.

Similarly, Meta spoke about adding an exclusive range of changes that would assist in combating matters related to data scraping. From technical tools to rate limits too, the firm hopes to bring change for the better so such issues never arise in the first place.

One year back, Meta was slammed with another fine for breaching its own transparency policy. And then even after that, we saw it getting a fine worth $18 million regarding data breaches.

But it’s not only this matter that has the DPC worried about Meta. They mentioned that a number of other inquiries will soon arise regarding different aspects of Meta’s organization. A huge probe regarding Meta’s legal basis through which it can process data belonging to users was a point worth mentioning. This particular complaint dates back to 4 and a half years ago.


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