EU Privacy Regulator Fines Meta EUR 91 Million Over Password Storage

The
lead

European
Union
privacy
regulator
fined
social
media
giant

Meta
91
million
euros
($101.5
million)
on
Friday
for
inadvertently
storing
some
users’
passwords
without
protection
or
encryption.

The
inquiry
was
opened
five
years
ago
after
Meta
notified
Ireland’s
Data
Protection
Commission
(DPC)
that
it
had
stored
some
passwords
in
‘plaintext’.
Meta
publicly
acknowledged
the
incident
at
the
time
and
the
DPC
said
the
passwords
were
not
made
available
to
external
parties.

“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,”
Irish
DPC
Deputy
Commissioner
Graham
Doyle
said
in
a
statement.

A
Meta
spokesperson
said
the
company
took
immediate
action
to
fix
the
error
after
identifying
it
during
a
security
review
in
2019,
and
that
there
is
no
evidence
the
passwords
were
abused
or
accessed
improperly.

Meta
engaged
constructively
with
the
DPC
throughout
the
inquiry,
the
spokesperson
added
in
a
statement
on
Friday.

The
DPC
is
the
lead
EU
regulator
for
most
of
the
top
U.S.
internet
firms
due
to
the
location
of
their
EU
operations
in
the
country.

It
has
so
far
fined
Meta
a
total
of
2.5
billion
euros
for
breaches
under
the
bloc’s
General
Data
Protection
Regulation’s
(GDPR),
introduced
in
2018,
including
a
record
1.2
billion
euro
fine
in
2023
that
Meta
is
appealing.

©
Thomson
Reuters
2024

(This
story
has
not
been
edited
by
NDTV
staff
and
is
auto-generated
from
a
syndicated
feed.)