Irish Regulator Fines Meta $400 Mln For Breaking Data Protection Laws

(RTTNews) - The Data Protection Commission, Ireland's data privacy regulator, has reportedly fined Meta (META) the parent company of Instagram, a record fine of 405 million euros ($402 million) after the social media platform broke data protection laws.

According to reports, the fine was related to Meta violating the General Data Protection Regulation and how the data of children on the app is handled.

The report says that Instagram allowed users aged between 13 and 17 to operate business accounts on the platform, which showed the users' phone numbers and email addresses. The DPC also found the platform had operated a user registration system whereby the accounts of 13-to-17-year-old users were set to "public" by default.

The DPC regulates Meta on behalf of the entire EU because the company's European headquarters are in Ireland.

A DPC spokesperson said: "We adopted our final decision last Friday and it does contain a fine of €405 million. Full details of the decision will be published next week."