European and Irish regulators have ordered Facebook owner Meta to pay a €1.2 billion fine for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by transferring European users' personal data to the US. This is the largest GDPR-related fine ever.
The breach by Meta’s Irish subsidiary was particularly serious because it involved systematic, repeated and continuous transfers, said Andrea Jelinek, chair of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the volume of personal data transferred was enormous, she said. The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organisations that serious breaches will have far-reaching consequences.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) did not fine Meta in July 2022, but the EDPB later overturned the DPC's ruling and instructed the agency to amend the draft to impose the penalty.
Meta's European fine record is unlikely to be beaten
The fine comes just days after reports that Meta subsidiary Instagram is looking to launch a Twitter-like platform in the near future. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, said several celebrities and social media influencers have been given access to the app in recent months.
The new penalty is notable because it is the largest fine to date, surpassing the €746 million fine the European Commission imposed on billionaire Zeff Berzos’ Amazon in July 2021. However, Meta is a company that is regularly on the list of fines for violating the European Union’s GDPR regulations. The total fines the group has received are estimated at €2.5 billion.
In 2021, Facebook and WhatsApp were fined €60 million and €225 million in France and Ireland, respectively, for failing to take adequate technical and organisational measures to ensure information security. The DPC has been investigating WhatsApp since late 2018.
In 2022, Meta was fined three times by the EU, with 17 million euros in March and 265 million euros in November for allowing the information of 500 million users in the European Union to be posted online. November was also the month when Instagram was fined up to 405 million euros for violating EU data privacy laws regarding the handling of children's data on the platform.
And before the historic 1.2 billion euro fine announced on May 22, Meta was fined 390 million euros on January 4, 2023 for violating the law on both social networking platforms Facebook and Instagram.
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