Ireland has fined Instagram €405 million. The reason: the treatment of the service with data of minors.
The online service Instagram will pay a fine of 405 million euros. This was announced by the Irish data protection commission DPC. Ireland had imposed the fine on the platform belonging to the digital group Meta because the service is said to have breached the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by handling minors’ data.
More information on the DPC’s decision is expected to be released next week. The DPC had already opened investigations against Instagram in late 2020. These revolved around the “adequacy” of Instagram’s profile settings and the platform’s responsibility to “uphold the privacy rights of children as vulnerable individuals.”
Sanction to Meta worth 17 million euros
The investigations were based on the GDPR, which came into force in May 2018 and authorizes data protection authorities, among other things, to impose high penalties for breaches of data protection regulations. Since Instagram’s parent company, Meta, has its European headquarters in Ireland, the Irish authorities are responsible for prosecuting potential infringements.
In March, Ireland had already fined Meta €17 million for data protection violations. In September last year, Ireland had forced the messaging service WhatsApp to pay 225 million euros.
The European Data Protection Board had previously ordered the DPC to increase the fine. The Irish authorities had initially proposed a fine of between 30 and 50 million euros.
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