Meta has received a hefty fine from the EU: this time an amount of 91 million euros for accidentally storing user passwords without protection or encryption.
The investigation into the case was started five years ago after Meta reported it to the Data Protection Commission (DPC) in Ireland. It had some passwords stored as plaintext. Meta reported this as soon as it happened. According to the DPC, no passwords have been made available to external parties.
Passwords
The reason Meta is still being fined for this is that it is generally known that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, given the risk of misuse by others, according to the DPC. Although Meta immediately looked for a solution after discovering this problem, it was not enough. This mistake has been made, people’s data has been mishandled and that is why the billion dollar company has to pay.
Under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which was introduced in 2018, Meta has already had to pay 2.5 billion euros for violations, including a fine of 1.3 billion euros, which the company is still appealing. The GDPR was created to protect, among other things, the personal data of EU citizens. You therefore have the right to inspect, correct and delete your data. You can also indicate that you want the collection of your data to be limited. The law obliges companies to think and act better when it comes to data.
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Source: www.bright.nl
