Meta Faces Hefty Fine for Password Security Breach

Meta has been fined $101.5 million by Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) for a significant security breach in 2019. This breach exposed hundreds of millions of Facebook passwords, overshadowing a prior incident in 2018 that affected 30 million users.

The DPC found Meta in violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for not encrypting passwords, failing to notify authorities promptly, and inadequately documenting the breach. The investigation, initiated in April 2019, highlighted the severity of storing passwords in plaintext, a practice that posed substantial risks to users' data security.

Despite Meta's efforts to rectify the issue, the breach underscored the company's ongoing challenges with data protection. This fine is part of a series of penalties Meta has faced under GDPR, including a record €1.2 billion fine in 2023 for data transfers and a €265 million fine in 2022 for data leaks.

Meta's annual revenue for 2023 was $134.90 billion, indicating that while the fines are substantial, they represent a fraction of the company's financial scale. The DPC's decision serves as a stern reminder of the importance of robust data protection measures and the stringent enforcement of GDPR regulations.