Meta Fined €91 Million by Irish Regulator for GDPR Breach, Storing 600 Million Passwords in Plaintext

Sep 27, 2024, 01:09 PM

Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has been fined €91 million ($102 million) by Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC), the lead European Union privacy regulator, after an investigation into the company's storage of user passwords in plaintext without encryption. The DPC found that Meta had violated the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by improperly storing passwords of up to 600 million Facebook users, which were accessible to thousands of Meta employees. The inquiry, which began in 2019, concluded that Meta did not take adequate measures to protect user data.