Meta fined US$263 million for hacked accounts on Facebook in 2018, Irish regulator announces

Ireland’s regulator, acting on behalf of the European Union, imposed a fine of 251 million euros ($263 million) on Metathe parent company of several social networks, due to a security breach in 2018 that allowed hackers to access the personal data of millions of users.

Among the breached information were personal data such as full name, email address, telephone number or even date of birth or religion, of Facebook users.

“This enforcement action highlights how failure to incorporate data protection requirements throughout the design and development cycle can expose people to very serious risks and harm, including a risk to the fundamental rights and freedoms of people,” said Graham Doyle, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Data Protection (DPC).

The regulator also warned that “This data breach affected around 29 million Facebook accounts worldwideof which around three million were based in the EU.”

For its part, Meta stated that they took immediate steps to remedy the situation as soon as they identified the problem and that during the incident they “proactively informed” people that their data was at risk.

The regulator imposes this fine on behalf of the European Union (EU), since the headquarters of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is located in Dublin. The tech giant is expected to appeal the decision.

With information from AFP.