From CNET: Meta has been caught failing to abide by Europe's privacy rules, resulting in the Irish Data Protection Commission slapping the social media giant with a hefty fine.
Facebook's parent company must pay a 265 million euro ($275 million) penalty and take a number of corrective measures, the Irish DPC said in an announcement on Monday as it concluded a year-and-a-half-long investigation.
The watchdog launched an inquiry into Meta after it discovered a collated dataset of people's personal Facebook data had been made available on the internet. After closely scrutinizing Facebook Search, Facebook Messenger Contact Importer and Instagram Contact Importer tools, it found that Meta was not living up to its legal obligation to ensure that it was protecting data by design and default.
It falls to Ireland's privacy watchdog to ensure Meta is following Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in 2018, because like many other Silicon Valley tech giants, Meta has chosen to base its European headquarters in that country. The GDPR gives European internet users some of the strongest privacy protections in the world. If there are security breaches, or if that data is held longer than necessary, companies can get in big trouble.
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