EU fines Meta for breaching teens data

European Union fines Meta, particularly Instagram, for making teens’ data public. The Data Protection Commission of Ireland charged, Instagram in particular, for breaching the General Data Protection Regulations. It was found that Instagram was making the data public of several accounts that belonged to teenagers. Right now, Meta is fined €405 million after a serious investigation by the Data Protection Commission.

Instagram was mishandling the data in two ways, identified by the DPC. First, it was letting the users of 13-17 years of age create business account which resulted in their account being public. In the world of likes and views, children want an increased reach of their content so they were switching from personal account to professional account. Secondly, Instagram was making some private accounts automatically public.

This fine is the third and most expensive one so far charged on Meta. Previously, WhatsApp was charged with about €225 million because it did not enlighten the citizens of Europe about its rules and policies clearly and how it was collecting their data. Also, there was another fine on Meta for some problem with how the managed to store their records for security purpose.

However, Meta claims that they managed the security of each account very carefully with huge scrutiny process. They have also tried to create Instagram with such products that are safe for children. And as for the public by default fine,Finds it the investigation irrelevant because they do not make accounts public by default