Irish regulator hits Meta with $275m fine over privacy breach in Europe

American multinational technology company, Meta Platforms, has been slammed with a fine of 265 million Euros ($275M) by the Irish data regulators for breaching Europe’s data privacy law.

The Data Protection Commission said in a statement that Meta Platforms Inc breached sections of the EU rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation.

The new fine takes the total fines that the regulator has imposed on Meta since last year to more than $900 million.

READ ALSO:Facebook parent company, Meta sacks 11,000 staff as job cuts in Silicon Valley grow

According to the privacy authority, the fine was meted on Meta after the regulators launched an investigation last year into news reports that data on more than 533 million users was found online.

Facebook, while responding to the claims, said that malicious actors had abused its contact importer tool to harvest additional information from users’ profiles.

“Protecting the privacy and security of people’s data is fundamental to how our business works.

“Unauthorised data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules and we will continue working with our peers on this industry challenge,” Meta said in defense.

Ripples Nigeria recently reported a similar development with Google when it agreed to pay a $391.5m in settlement to 40 states in the USA after accepting responsibility of tracking users’ location without their consent.

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