Meta Fined €265M for Data Leak Involving 530M Users

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced that Facebook's parent company, Meta, will be fined €265 million ($273 million USD) for a 2021 data leak involving approximately 533 million users' information. Meta will also have to implement a "range of corrective measures" following the DPC's decision.

This announcement marks the conclusion of an inquiry that began on April 14, 2021, after media reports surfaced that threat actors leaked a Facebook personal dataset on the Dark Web. The information included names, genders, locations, dates of birth, relationship status, phone numbers, and email addresses.

The DPC discussed the inquiry:

"The scope of the inquiry concerned an examination and assessment of Facebook Search, Facebook Messenger Contact Importer and Instagram Contact Importer tools in relation to processing carried out by Meta Platforms Ireland Limited ('MPIL') during the period between 25 May 2018 and September 2019. The material issues in this inquiry concerned questions of compliance with the GDPR obligation for Data Protection by Design and Default."

The DPC says it also recorded findings of infringement of Articles 25(1) and 25(2) of the GDPR, which are summarized below:

1. The controller shall implement appropriate technical and organizational measures which are designed to implement data-protection principles  in an effective manner and to integrate the necessary safeguards into the processing in order to meet the requirements of this Regulation and protect the rights of data subjects.
2. The controller shall implement appropriate technical and organizational measures for ensuring that only personal data which are necessary for each specific purpose of the processing are processed. That obligation applies to the amount of personal data collected, the extent of their processing, the period of their storage and their accessibility. In particular, such measures shall ensure that personal data are not made accessible without the individual’s intervention to an indefinite number of natural persons.

This is now the third time that Meta has been fined by the DPC in 2022. The first one was in March, when the company was fined $18.6 million for mishandling information related to a 2018 data breach that involved the personal information of 30 million users. The second fine came in September, totaling $402 million after an investigation found that Instagram mishandled data of teenage users.

The three fines make it nearly $700 million that Meta has been fined by the DPC in 2022. How much money do you think they need to be fined before any changes are made?

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