Meta Fined $277 million by top European regulator
From SC Magazine:
A top European regulator has fined Facebook owner Meta €265 million ($277 million) for failing to protect more than half a billion users’ information from so-called data scrapers.
The Irish Data Protection Commission, Meta’s main privacy watchdog in the European Union, levied the fine following disclosure of an investigation in the spring of 2021 that revealed over 530 million Facebook users’ information had been leaked on a public forum…
…The EU has continued tightening regulation of tech giants over the past year, with those companies now communicating with the European Commission to specify the application of each new law. It’s a reality that many U.S.-based tech companies must deal with as the regulatory gap between Europe and the United States continues to grow, and EU regulators have showed a greater willingness to hit violators in their pocketbook with fines and other financial penalties.
Not everyone is a fan of that approach.
“The goal of privacy regulators should be compliance and increasing privacy and security rather than rushing to fine and take enforcement action,” Brandon Pugh, senior fellow and policy counsel at R Street Institute, said.
