Meta, the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp, has been fined $101.5 million by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC).
The penalty comes as a result of a five-year investigation into Meta’s inadvertent storage of some users’ passwords in an unencrypted, plaintext format.
The inquiry began in 2019 when Meta, then known as Facebook, self-reported the security oversight to the DPC.
The company discovered during an internal security review that it had been storing some user passwords without proper protection or encryption.
While Meta promptly acknowledged the incident publicly and assured that the passwords were not accessed by external parties, the lapse in security protocols was deemed severe enough to warrant a substantial fine.
Graham Doyle, Deputy Commissioner of the Irish DPC, emphasised the gravity of the situation: “It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data.”, he said.
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A spokesperson for Meta stated that the company took immediate action to rectify the error upon its discovery in 2019.
They reiterated that there is no evidence of password abuse or improper access.
The spokesperson also noted Meta’s constructive engagement with the DPC throughout the investigation process.
This fine is part of a larger pattern of regulatory actions against Meta under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2018.
To date, the DPC has levied a total of $2.79 billion in fines against Meta for various GDPR breaches.
This includes a record-breaking $1.34 billion penalty in 2023, which Meta is currently appealing.
The Irish DPC’s prominence in these cases stems from Ireland’s status as the European headquarters for many major U.S. tech companies, including Meta.
This positioning makes the DPC the lead EU regulator for these firms, placing it at the forefront of enforcing GDPR compliance among tech giants.
