Meta Platforms Inc. faces a €251 million fine from Ireland's data protection commission for a breach that impacted 29 million users worldwide. The breach involved unauthorized third parties exploiting user tokens on Facebook.
Ireland’s data protection commission fined Meta Platforms Inc.’s Irish arm €251 million following two inquiries into a personal data breach that it said impacted 29 million users worldwide.It impacted data including full names, email addresses, phone numbers, posts on timelines and groups of which the user was a member, according to a statement by the watchdog on Tuesday.
Approximately three million of the users impacted were based in the European Union and European Economic Area, the statement added. The breach arose from the exploitation by unauthorised third parties of user tokens on Facebook, the statement added.The DPC found that the tech giant infringed GDPR rules by failing to document facts relating to breaches and the steps taken to remedy them. It also noted that it failed in its obligations to ensure that, by default, only personal data necessary for specific purposes are processed, the statement said. “We took immediate action to fix the problem as soon as it was identified, and we pro-actively informed people impacted as well as the Irish Data Protection Commission,” We have a wide range of industry-leading measures in place to protect people across our platforms,” a Meta company spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Ireland’s watchdog already chided the platform this year, slapping it with a €91 million fine in September over an investigation into password storing by the company. It only adds to a record €1.2 billion European Union privacy fine that the tech giant was handed last year by the same commission when it was accused of shipping users’ data to the US. The fines are part of the EU’s broader big tech crackdown, which the Irish watchdog plays a large part in thanks to being the lead privacy regulator for some of the biggest tech firms with an EU base in the country. The DPC will publish the full decision and further related information in due course, it said. Meta said it will appeal the decisions
DATA BREACH META GDPR FINES PRIVACY
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