Meta Platforms Inc. (META stock), the company that owns Facebook, was fined 265 million euros, which is equivalent to about $276 million, by a leading European regulator for failing to adequately protect the phone numbers and other information of more than half a billion users from the activities of so-called data scrapers.
The Penalty and Effect on the META Stock
The monetary penalty that was levied against Meta ( NASDAQ:META ) on Monday by the Data Protection Commission of Ireland, which serves as the company’s primary privacy regulator within the European Union, is the most recent sign that authorities in the region are becoming more assertive in their application of the privacy law of the bloc too large technology companies.
A little more than a year ago, Meta-owned WhatsApp was fined €225 million (roughly $267 million) for transparency violations. Instagram, owned by Meta, was fined €405 million earlier this fall for violating children’s privacy rights. The company was also hit with an $18.6 million fine in March for a series of earlier Facebook data breaches.
Shares in Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have plunged more than 20% after a downbeat set of results from the tech giant.
The judgment made on Monday represents the third time in the previous 15 months that Ireland has fined Meta and its subsidiaries in connection with a privacy lawsuit. These companies include WhatsApp and Instagram. The total amount of the combined financial penalties is more significant than $900 million. The other cases involve how Instagram handles data about children and the transparency with which WhatsApp deals with user information. Meta intends to file an appeal over those decisions.
According to a spokeswoman for Meta, the business plans to examine the decision made on M...
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