Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB), owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been fined €265mln by Irish regulators after it was found to have breached European data protection laws.
Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd was found to have infringed two articles of EU data laws, which it was ordered to fix with a “range of specified remedial actions,” according to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC).
Details from over 500mln users was leaked online by hackers, who ‘scraped’ the data from the online profiles.
Hackers could access personal information in large volumes due to the lack of protection by Meta over the data.
The DPC launched the inquiry in April last year, following reports that a database of user’s information had been leaked, prompting the regulator to investigate several search and messaging tools used on Facebook and Instagram.
In response, Meta said: “We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers. Unauthorised data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules.”
Meta has been hit by a string of fines from the DPC, amounting to roughly €1bn since September last year.
The Facebook owner has been found to breach EU data law several times, while also receiving a fine for allowing teenagers to publicly display contact information on public Instagram accounts.
Fellow US tech giant Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), which owns Google, has also been fined for privacy issues of late, after agreeing to pay a settlement worth nearly US$400mln in the US for allegedly tracking user’s locations.
Earlier this year, the government moved to reinforce the UK competition authority’s Digital Markets Unit, giving it more power to impose fines on companies that breached user data agreements.
Chancellor Jeremey Hunt suggested the legislation to back this up, known as the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill, will be addressed in parliament early next year.