Huge fines have been imposed on Instagram for violating children’s privacy protection.
Ireland’s data protection commissioner has fined Instagram’s parent company Metal a whopping 405 million euros. The reason for the fine is Instagram’s way of collecting user data from children, which has violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Reported about it Politico.
The reason behind the fines is Meta’s publication of children’s email addresses and phone numbers on the Instagram platform after the accounts were public by default.
Meta told Politico that it was a case related to old practices, which led to Instagram’s settings being updated more than a year ago. Instagram has rolled out features to keep teen users’ information private.
– Accounts of under-18s are automatically set to private when they join Instagram, so only people they know can see what they post, and adults can’t send messages to teenagers who don’t follow them, Meta commented on the incident.
This is the second largest GDPR fine in history. Amazon has received the biggest fines of 746 million euros. WhatsApp, owned by Meta, has previously been fined 225 million euros and Facebook 17 million euros. According to Politico, Ireland’s data protection commissioner is currently investigating at least six other cases related to Meta.