Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has been fined 265 million euros ($370 million CAD) for violating data privacy rules in the European Union.
The Irish Data Protection Commission has pointed out that Meta’s platforms breach sections of European Union rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which require technical and organizational measures to protect user data.
The Irish regulator opened an investigation last year in relation to reports that data on more than 533 million users had been made available online. The data was found on a website for hackers and included names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, locations, birth dates and emails of people from more than 100 countries, according to some media reports.
Meta said the data was “copied” from Facebook using tools designed to help people find their friends with phone numbers using search and contact import functions. The Commission said it investigated these copies made between May 2018 and September 2019.
The company said it had “cooperated fully” with the Irish regulator.
“We made changes to our systems during the time period in question,” Meta said in a statement. Unauthorized copying of data is unacceptable and against our policies. »
Along with the fine, the commission said it also imposed a “range of corrective measures” on Meta, which were not specified.
This is the latest in a series of sanctions that the Irish regulator has imposed on Meta over the past two years.
The company, based in Menlo Park, Calif., has its European headquarters in Dublin, making the Irish authority its primary privacy regulator under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. European Union, in a system called one-stop shop.
The Irish regulator fined Meta-owned Instagram €405 million ($565 million) in September after it found the platform mishandled the personal information of teenagers. Meta was fined €17 million (CA$24 million) in March for handling a dozen data breach notifications.
Last year, the watchdog fined Meta’s messaging service WhatsApp €225 million ($314 million) for breaking rules on sharing people’s data with other Meta companies. .