Meta has been hit with a €265 million ($277 million) superb for failing to forestall tens of millions of Facebook customers’ cell phone numbers and different knowledge from being scraped and dumped on-line, Independent.ie has reported. It’s the second superb levied by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) in simply the previous few months, following a €405 million ($402 million on the time) penalty issued in September. In simply the final 18 months, Meta has tallied practically €1 billion in fines. 

The penalty was issued in response to the leak of 533 million Facebook customers’ knowledge reported in April final yr. That included telephone numbers, beginning dates, e mail addresses and places, info that might be exploited in phishing and different assaults. The non-public info of sitting judges, jail officers, social staff, journalists and others have been posted on-line, the DPC stated.

At the time, Meta blamed the assault on “bad actors,” however Ireland’s regulator stated the corporate did not adjust to GDPR obligations of “data protection by design and default.” It wrote in a news release that different knowledge safety authorities within the EU “agreed with the decision of the DPC.” 

Meta confirmed to the The Wall Street Journal that the flaw had been patched again in 2019. The firm stated that it’s going to assessment DPC Ireland’s choice, however has not but determined whether or not to enchantment. “Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules,” the spokesperson added. 

Last yr, the DPC fined Meta’s WhatsApp €225 million ($267 million) for not offering particulars of the way it shares European Union customers’ knowledge with Facebook. It was additionally hit with a €17 million ($18.6 million) superb over 12 separate knowledge breaches, and penalized €405 million ($402 million) for its dealing with of youngsters’s privateness settings on Instagram.