Ireland imposes a €251 GDPR million fine on Meta

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) imposed a €251 million fine on Meta. This is one of the largest fines to date under GDPR, issued following an investigation that began in 2018. Regulators concluded that a security breach impacted around 29 million accounts globally and 3 million European accounts, exposing their personal information. 

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Plenty of personal details became available to hackers who exploited the code issue that enabled this security breach, including users’ emails, phone numbers, and children’s personal information.

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The security issue was detected in 2018, and Meta made immediate efforts to fix it, also reporting the issue to the relevant authorities. Yet according to the DPC, the company didn’t document and report the problem as required under GDPR.

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