Meta fined 265 million euros by Ireland, more than 500 million user data leaked

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen kkkkkkkkkayd for the clue delivery! According to news on the evening of November 28, Beijing time, Facebook parent company Meta was today fined 265 million euros (currently about 1.988 billion yuan) by the Irish data Protection Commission (DPC), mainly because the personal information of hundreds of millions of Facebook users was leaked to the Internet.

In April 2021, the personal data of about 533 million Facebook users was leaked to the Internet, including their names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Subsequently, DPC launched an investigation into this.

Facebook said at the time that the data breach was a simple data theft, not that the system had been hacked. The incident occurred before September 2019, when malicious saboteurs took advantage of a vulnerability in the Facebook synchronous contacts tool to steal the data. After discovering the problem, Facebook quickly fixed the vulnerability.

As part of the survey, DPC examined and evaluated Facebook search, Facebook Messenger contact importer, and Instagram contact importer. The results of the investigation show that Meta violated the relevant provisions of Chapter 25 of the EU General data Protection regulations (GDPR).

Helen Dixon, DPC data protection commissioner, said: "because of the scale of the data leaked and similar data breaches on the Facebook platform before, we have decided to impose major sanctions on Meta. For individuals, the risks of fraud, spam, SMS fraud, phishing and getting out of control of personal data are quite high, so we have fined Meta a total of 265 million euros. "

In addition to fines, DPC requires Meta to take a series of specific remedial actions within a specific period of time to comply with its data processing process.

A spokesman for Meta said the company was carefully evaluating DPC's decision.

In September, DPC also imposed a fine of 405 million euros (currently about 3.038 billion yuan) on Instagram, a social platform owned by Meta, mainly for improper handling of teenage user data. Meta subsequently filed an appeal to the court.

Meanwhile, Dixon said today that her office is also concerned about recent layoffs at Twitter. Regulators in Europe and the United States have previously expressed similar concerns that Twitter's layoffs could affect its ability to meet regulatory obligations.

"We are concerned about this and are in close contact with Twitter," Dixon said. "We have conducted a number of public inquiries with Twitter." DPC is the main regulator of Meta in the European Union because Meta's European headquarters is in Ireland.