Facebook’s parent company Meta was fined $276 million today by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission for failing to devise better methods of safeguarding consumer data of more than half a billion people. The data in question consists of phone numbers and other personal information which is often the target of data scrapers.

Today marks the third time in which the Data Protection Commission has fined Meta for failing to abide by data privacy requirements which highlight the EU’s push for better data protection practices. All of the fines imposed on Meta have occurred within the past 15 months making the total value of the fines reach nearly $900 million.

A Meta spokesman stated that the company will have to review Monday’s decision and determine whether the company is going to appeal. The decision to fine Meta partly comes from a hack that occurred in the spring of 2021 in which a hacker released 530 million Facebook users' personal information.

Since then, Meta has stated that they have made multiple changes to better safeguard data and prevent events such as this from occurring.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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