Meta Hit With $102 Million Privacy Fine From European Union Over 2019 Password Security Lapse

LONDON — Meta was fined more than $100 million by the social media giant’s European Union privacy regulator on Friday for a security breach involving Facebook users’ passwords.

Following an inquiry, the Irish Data Protection Commission imposed a penalty of 91 million euros ($101.6 million) on the US software company.

The watchdog launched an investigation in 2019 after Meta informed it that certain passwords had been unintentionally saved internally in plain text, which meant they weren’t secured and staff could look for them.

Meta Hit With $102 Million Privacy Fine From European Union Over 2019 Password Security Lapse

Meta Hit With $102 Million Privacy Fine From European Union Over 2019 Password Security Lapse

Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle stated that it is “widely accepted” that user passwords should not be retained in plain text “considering the risks of abuse.”

According to Meta, a security review revealed that a “subset” of Facebook users’ credentials were “temporarily logged in readable format.”

Meta Hit With $102 Million Privacy Fine From European Union Over 2019 Password Security Lapse

“We took immediate action to fix this error, and there is no evidence that these passwords were abused or accessed improperly,” the company stated in a statement. “We proactively flagged this issue to our lead regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission, and have engaged constructively with them throughout this inquiry.”

It’s the latest in a run of large fines for Meta and its social networking platforms imposed by the Dublin-based watchdog, the company’s primary regulator under the EU’s rigorous data privacy rules. They include a 405 million euro fine for Instagram for mishandling teen data, a 5.5 million euro penalty for WhatsApp, and a 1.2 billion euro charge for Meta for transatlantic data transfers.

SOURCE | AP