Meta’s Irish Arm Fined $264 Million by Watchdog Over Data Breach

Ireland's data protection commission fined Meta Platforms' Irish arm €251 million ($264 million or roughly Rs. 2,242 crore) following two inquiries into a personal data breach that it said impacted 29 million users worldwide.

The breach was reported by Meta Platforms Ireland Limited in September 2018. It impacted data including full names, email addresses, phone numbers, posts on time lines and groups of which the user was a member, according to a statement by the watchdog 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. It was remedied by MPIL and its US parent company shortly after its discovery, it 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 ($95.6 million or roughly Rs. 812 crore) fine in September over an investigation into password storing by the company.

It only adds to a record €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion or roughly Rs.11,040 crore) 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. 

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