Data protection: Facebook parent company fined in Ireland

The Meta logo, parent company at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on October 28, 2021. AP - Tony Avelar

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1 min

In Ireland, Meta – the parent company of Facebook – has just been fined a heavy 265 million euros for not having sufficiently protected the data of its users.

Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland, so it was the responsibility of the Irish regulator to lead the investigation.

The American giant will now have to follow a series of corrective measures.

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With our correspondent in Dublin,

This is a blow for the company, which has just laid off more than 11,000 people to cope with falling revenues and fierce competition in the sector.

The fine comes from Ireland, but it is the EU which is at the origin of this investigation opened a year and a half ago.

The alert was issued after the data of more than 530 million users in more than 100 countries were hacked in 2019.

The Facebook Search, Messenger and Instagram applications are concerned, and particularly this tool which allows you to find your friends by importing your contacts from your phone.

This hacked data was then published on a hacker forum.

Using very powerful software, they plundered Facebook profiles and shared names, places of residence and some email addresses.

Has Meta complied with European regulations and done everything to ensure that this data does not end up in the wild?

The answer is therefore no.

Several violations were observed.

Meta is regularly targeted by regulators around the world.

This latest sanction brings the total amount of European fines to nearly one billion euros.

►Read again: Meta, the parent company of Facebook announces the loss of 11,000 jobs

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