Facebook’s Meta fined $277 million for leaking data of half a billion users

While reeling from the fallout of its metaverse disaster and falling stock price, Facebook’s parent company suffer another setback today after a report from the Wall Street Journal that the social giant was fined $277 million for leaking data of half a billion users.

The announcement comes just a day after another report that hackers have put for sale a new set of 487 million WhatsApp phone numbers for sales in the Dark Web.

The  Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Meta received a 265 million euros, (about $277 million) privacy fine in Europe for a data-scraping leak and for not better safeguarding more than half a billion users’ phone numbers and other information from so-called data scrapers.

The fine was issued Monday by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, Meta’s main privacy regulator in the European Union. It is a further indication of how authorities in the region are becoming more aggressive in applying its privacy law to large technology companies, The Journal reported.

Early this year, Google and Facebook were fined $237 million for cookie breaches and for making it difficult for EU internet users to easily reject online trackers. France’s data privacy watchdog CNIL fined Alphabet’s Google €150 million ($169 million) and Facebook €60 ($68,000) million for violating EU privacy rules by making it difficult for French internet users to refuse online trackers known as cookies.

According to the information posted on its website, CNIL fined US-based Google and its Irish operations €90 million and €60 million respectively. The watchdog also fined Facebook’s Irish arm €60 million for failing to allow users to easily reject cookie tracking technology.

Meanwhile, Binance CEO reported on Sunday that a new set of 487 million WhatsApp phone numbers for sales in the Dark Web.

“A sample indicates the phone numbers are legit. Please stay vigilant as threat actors downstream will use this data to conduct smishing (phishing messages) campaigns. Stay SAFU. 🙏,” CZ added.

https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1596738751199256576

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