Meta is fined over $100 million by the EU for its password storing policies
Social networking behemoth Meta was penalized 91 million euros ($101.5 million) by the European Union’s top privacy authority on Friday for unintentionally keeping certain users’ passwords without encryption or security.
The Data Protection Commission (DPC) in Ireland was told by Meta that it had saved certain passwords in «plain text,» which prompted the opening of the inquiry five years ago. At the time, Meta made the situation publicly known, and the DPC said that no third party had access to the credentials.
According to a representative for Meta, the business discovered the problem during a security assessment in 2019 and fixed it right away. They also claim that there is no proof that credentials were misused or unlawfully obtained.
For violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was implemented in 2018, the EU has fined Meta a total of €2.5 billion thus far. Among those fines is a record of €1.2 billion in 2023, which Meta is contesting.
