European and Irish regulators have ordered Facebook owner Meta to pay a €1,2 billion fine for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding data transfers. individual European users to the US. This is the largest GDPR-related fine ever.
Andrea Jelinek, President of the European Data Protection Commission (EDPB) said the breach by its subsidiary Meta in Ireland was very serious as it involved repeated, systematic transfers. again and continuously. She said Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the volume of personal data being transferred is huge. The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organizations that serious violations will have far-reaching consequences.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) did not fine Meta in July 7.2022, but the EDPB later overruled the DPC's ruling and instructed the agency to amend the draft to impose the penalty.
Meta's European fine record is hard to beat
The fine comes just days after it was reported that Instagram, a subsidiary of Meta, is looking to launch a Twitter-like platform in the near future. Bloomberg cited unnamed sources as saying that a number of celebrities and social media influencers have gained access to the app in recent months.
The new penalty is notable because it is the largest fine to date, surpassing the number that the European Commission fined Amazon billionaire Zeff Berzos in July 7.2021 with a sum of 746 million euros. However, Meta is a company that is regularly on the list of fines for violating EU GDPR regulations. It is estimated that the total amount of fines that this group has to receive is up to 2,5 billion euros.
In 2021, Facebook and WhatsApp were fined in France and Ireland in the amount of 60 million euros and 225 million euros, respectively, for not having enough technical and organizational measures to ensure information security. The WhatsApp incident has been investigated by the DPC since the end of 2018.
In 2022, Meta was again fined 3 times by the EU, with 3 million euros in March and 17 million euros in November for letting the information of 11 million users in the European Union leaked online. November was also the month when Instagram was fined up to 265 million euros for violating EU data privacy laws for the handling of children's data on the platform.
And before the historic €1,2 billion fine announced on May 22.5, Meta was also fined €390 million on January 4.1.2023, XNUMX for violating the law on both social networking platforms Facebook and Instagram.
