• By Ashish Singh
  • Fri, 27 Sep 2024 07:11 PM (IST)
  • Source:Reuters

Social networking giant Meta has been fined 91 million euros ($101.5 million) by the top privacy authority in the European Union on Friday for inadvertently storing certain users' passwords without encryption or security.

The investigation was started five years ago when Meta informed the Data Protection Commission (DPC) in Ireland that it had some passwords stored in "plaintext." At the time, Meta made the issue publicly known, and the DPC stated that no outside parties were given access to the credentials.

Irish DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle stated in a statement that "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."

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According to a representative for Meta, the business corrected the issue right away after discovering it during a security review in 2019 and there is no proof that the passwords were misused or obtained unlawfully.

The spokesperson noted in a statement on Friday that Meta cooperated with the DPC in a positive manner during the investigation. Because most of the major US internet companies have operations in the EU, the DPC is the primary EU regulator for them.

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With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, which went into effect in 2018, Meta has been fined a total of 2.5 billion euros so far for violations. Meta is currently contesting a record fine of 1.2 billion euros that was assessed in 2023.