Meta Fined about 17 Mln Euros for Violating Privacy

Ireland’s DPC has fined Meta $18.7 million on after an investigation of 12 separate data breach notices revealed they had violated EU privacy rules.

The Regulatory agency said on Tuesday that Meta platforms failed to have in place  appropriate technical and organizational measures that would enable it to easily demonstrate in practice the security measures it has implemented to protect EU user data.

The violations that were mentioned by the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) in a period between June and December 2018, have affected 30 million Facebook users.

Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), platforms are required to quickly detect personal data violations if they are possibly put inpidual users in risk- with a 72-hour reporting period for most serious violations.

The Meta spokesperson dismissed the fine as the product of long-lost record keeping practices that “we have since updated”, rather than “a failure to protect people’s information.”

The Regulatory agency fined WhatsApp $267 million (225 million Euros) last year, arguing that the messaging app failed in following GDPR privacy law standards, regarding the need to be open and honest with users about what the company plans to do with their data.

Meta (when it was still Facebook0 agreed to a $5 billion settlement  with the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019, one of the many fines and settlements the company has filed in recent years as states have  become more emboldened to pursue its many privacy violations that are committed by the social media giant.

Contributed by Israa Farhan