Ireland’s data protection regulator DPC said on Monday it has completed its investigation, which it started in April 2021 after names, phone numbers and email addresses were posted on a hacker forum. The data protection authorities of other EU members have cooperated with the Irish authorities and adopted their decision.
Facebook said it would review the decision. Criminals would have reviewed (scraped) publicly available data before September 2019 and then made it online on platforms. However, Facebook’s systems were not hacked.
The Irish Authority has heavily fined Meta for the fourth time since September 2021. WhatsApp, the subsidiary at the time, had to pay 225 million euros for violating data protection rules. In March 2022, the parent company was fined another 17 million euros for data protection breaches. In September, DPC fined Instagram €405 million for serious violations of children’s privacy rules.
Meta appealed the decisions of both Instagram and WhatsApp. Now the judges have to decide. The decision is considered to set a precedent for future investigations into data breaches. International technology groups such as Meta are a major employer in Ireland. Hundreds of jobs out there are at risk after the network giant decided to lay off a large number of people around the world.
(SDA)