An Irish regulator tasked with policing European Union data privacy announced friday that Facebook owner, Meta had been fined 91 million euros ($102 million) for password security breaches.
The Data Protection Commission chastised Meta for failing to implement adequate security measures to protect users' password data and for taking too long to notify the authority about the problem.
The DPC said in a statement that an inquiry was launched in April 2019 after Meta Ireland informed the regulator that it had “inadvertently stored certain passwords of social media users” in a readable format on its internal system.
“It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data,” said Graham Doyle, the regulator’s head of communications.
According to AFP, Doyle said the breach, which took place in January 2019, affected 36 million Facebook and Instagram users across the European Economic Area, which comprises the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway
The regulator criticised Meta for not alerting the DPC of the problem until March 2019.
In a statement to AFP, Meta acknowledged that some Facebook users’ passwords were “temporarily stored in a readable format in our internal data systems”.
“We took immediate action to fix this error, and there is no evidence that these passwords were abused or accessed improperly.
“We proactively flagged this issue to our lead regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission, and have engaged constructively with them throughout this inquiry”, a Meta spokesperson added.
Many global tech companies including Google, Apple and Meta, domicile their European operations in Dublin.
According to Digital 247, this is why Ireland's data protection agency is the lead regulator responsible for holding them to account.
The news plaform further said The fine levied Friday, dwarfed by Meta's multibillion-dollar earnings, is the latest in a series imposed on the US social media giant and its rivals as worldwide authorities strive to rein in big internet giants over taxation, competition, and disinformation.
Ireland this month launched an investigation in Google's artificial intelligence development.
It came as the European Commission scored two major legal victories in separate cases that left Apple and Google owing billions of euros.
It is also reported that at the same time, an EU court scrapped a 1.49-billion euro fine imposed by Brussels against Google over abuse of dominance in online advertising.
Tech giants are also seeking out each other over alleged breaches.
