US tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook, was fined 17 million euros ($18.7 million) for violating European Union data protection regulations, Ireland's regulator, the country where the group is based in Europe, announced on Tuesday.
The fine imposed on Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, follows an investigation into 12 cases of unlawful use of user data, explained the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).
The Republic of Ireland, an EU member country that hosts the European headquarters of many large technology companies such as Apple, Google and Twitter, plays a key role in monitoring compliance with the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
According to this body, Meta's platforms “failed to take appropriate technical and organizational measures” in the case of these 12 personal data breaches.
The DPC received notifications of these cases for a period of six months between June 7, 2018 and December 4, 2018, he said.
A Meta spokesman assured that “this fine refers to the 2018 recordkeeping practices that we have updated since then, not a failure to protect people's information.”
“We take our obligations under the GDPR seriously and will carefully consider this decision as our processes continue to evolve,” he told AFP.
Two European supervisory authorities involved in the GDPR enforcement process objected to the initial decision of the DPC, but “consensus was achieved through increased engagement between the DPC and the supervisory authorities,” the Irish commission specified.
In September last year, Ireland sanctioned WhatsApp with a record fine of 225 million euros under pressure from other European regulators to increase a much lower initial sanction.
The GDPR, which came into force in 2018, is a tool for EU member countries to curb the excesses of large technology companies, giving national watchdogs cross-border powers and the possibility of imposing heavy fines for illegitimate use of personal data.
csp-acc/mb
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