Meta Fined €251 Million by Irish Data Protection Commission Over Facebook Data Breach

The Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) has fined Meta €251 million for a data breach involving its social network, Facebook, according to an official statement published on the commission's website.

The breach occurred in September 2018 when a hacker attack compromised the personal information of around 29 million users, including approximately 3 million individuals from the European Union. Meta quickly addressed the vulnerability once it was discovered, but the fallout from the incident led to extensive investigations and penalties.

This isn't the first major fine related to Facebook. In 2019, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed a record $5 billion penalty on the company over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. That incident revealed that the British firm harvested data from over 87 million Facebook users to create psychological profiles for political campaigns, including Donald Trump’s presidential bid and the pro-Brexit movement.