Facebook fined €1.2 billion over mis-use of data

Facebook owner, Meta fined €1.2 billion for mishandling users data.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which regulates Meta across the EU, has imposed a €1.2 billion on the social media giant.

The fine represents a record for a breach of the bloc’s general data protection regulation.

The fine is in part because the Meta failed to comply with a 2020 decision by the E.U.’s highest court.

The decision states that data transfer from Europe to the US was not sufficiently protected from American spy agencies.

The ruling only affects Facebook and not Instagram and WhatsApp, which Meta also own.

The fine stems from a lawsuit in 2020 won by Austrian privacy activist, Max Schrems.

The lawsuit invalidated a U.S.-E.U. pact, known as Privacy Shield, that had allowed Facebook and other companies to move data between the two regions. The European Court of Justice said the risk of U.S. spying on the data violated the rights of European users.

“Unless U.S. surveillance laws get fixed, Meta will have to fundamentally restructure its systems,” Mr. Schrems said in a statement on Monday.

Meta are planning to appeal the decision and said it was being unfairly singled out for its data-sharing practices.

Meta is one of the world’s most valuable companies and among the ten largest publicly traded corporations in the United States.