Facebook has always been controversial for securing its users' data and in the prevailing news for it several times. It is unfortunately not the first time that Meta has been accused and fined for a data-scraping breach. Once again, Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) charged meta recently and fined a big chunk of penalty for the Facebook data leak of 2021. It leaked the personal information of its users in the year 2018-19, including the birthdays, locations, and phone numbers of more than 500 million people.
Even though some years have passed, the DPC started its investigation into the matter on the 14th of April, 2022. Through various methods, users' data was made accessible on the internet. After a year of profound inspection, DPC announced at almost the end of 2022 that meta was found accountable because the company did not conform to the E.U. Privacy Law for “Data Protection by Design and Default”.
Three penalties worth up to $900 million were imposed on Meta’s companies by DPC in the past 15 months for providing poor privacy to its consumers. The same authorities from Ireland charged another penalty of $400 million to Meta in September for Instagram's lack of concern for children's sensitive data. That includes revealing the teenagers' phone numbers and email addresses, which could lead any adult user to contact and approach them through a single application.
Meta and Instagram received enormous backlash from innumerable users. The application was in the news about how badly these social media apps with absolutely superficial security features can affect the mental health of younger users. The Meta must alter its policy where the age limit of a user should be above 14 years old.
Similarly, in October, Meta was held accountable for another infringement by leaking data of WhatsApp users and fined an amount of $235 million.
Ireland is the hub of the headquarters of the most significant and leading tech companies that include
Apple,
Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
As per the prevailing news from
The Wall Street Journal, a Meta representative shared that the brand is in the process of reviewing the current penalties from DPC. However, it is uncertain whether the company would appeal. He said, “Protecting the privacy and security of people’s data is fundamental to how our business works. That’s why we have cooperated fully with the Irish Data Protection Commission on this important issue”.
The DPC authorities finalized its stance last week and announced the decision on Monday. The report presents two GDPR rules that got defied by the widely-known meta. Additionally, the DPC ordered Meta to share its data processing, specifically Facebook. The authorities required it to identify and ensure that this violation will not take place in the future.
Several other supervisory authorities within the EU approved the DPC's decision following the most extensive investigation method.
