In April 2021, Goal suffered the leak of personal data of more than 500 million users, and now will have to face a new million-dollar fine imposed by European regulators. More specifically, by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which punished Mark Zuckerberg’s firm for failing to properly protect the information of the affected accounts.
The truth is that the American company will have to pay €265 million for not taking the technical and organizational measures to avoid exposing such a large number of users. Additionally, Meta will have to make changes to its systems to prevent data from leaking so easily. In this sense, The Wall Street Journal mentions that the default settings will have to be changed to prevent users’ personal information from being shared with an unlimited number of people.
Facebook’s massive data breach exposed full names, dates of birth, locations and, in some cases, email addresses and phone numbers. The event affected audiences in 106 countries, including the United States (32 million), Spain (10 million), Mexico (13 million) and Argentina (2 million).
As it became known later, a vulnerability in the social network allowed the phone numbers associated with each account to be seen. It was exploited at the beginning of 2020, although Meta claimed to have repaired it in 2019. The truth is that around 533 million people throughout the world suffered the exposure of their personal data.
Regarding the fine applied by the Irish DPC, the Menlo Park firm indicated that it will analyze the punishment and later it will define if it will appeal it or not.
Fourth million-dollar fine for Meta in Ireland
The new economic punishment issued from Ireland, where Meta has its main European offices, adds to three other large-caliber fines that were announced in just over a year. Is that the same DPC he had applied a penalty of 225 million euros in September 2021 for not correctly informing users in the European Union how they managed their personal data on WhatsApp.
While in March of this year he forced her to pay 17 million dollars for a leak of Facebook users from 2018. While last September he fined her 402 million euros for the mismanagement of the personal information of teens on instagram
Thus, only in the last 15 months, Meta It already has almost 1,000 million euros in fines of the DPC for breaching the General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR). Still, Californians have appealed the punishments related to Instagram and WhatsApp.
To all this we must add other scandals in which the company led by Mark Zuckerberg has been involved. From the problematic purchase of Giphy, which ultimately will not take place, to the pressure exerted to control the online advertising market with Google.