The Irish Information Safety Fee (DPC) has slapped Meta with a $101.5 million (€91 million) advantageous after wrapping up an investigation right into a safety breach in 2019, whereby the corporate mistakenly stored users’ passwords in plain text. Meta’s unique announcement solely talked about the way it discovered some person passwords saved in plain textual content on its servers in January that yr. However a month later, it up to date its announcement to disclose that millions of Instagram passwords had been additionally saved in simply readable format.
Whereas Meta did not say what number of accounts had been affected, a senior worker instructed Krebs on Security again then that the incident concerned as much as 600 million passwords. A number of the passwords had been saved in simply readable format within the firm’s servers since 2012. They had been additionally reportedly searchable by over 20,000 Fb workers, although the DPC has clarified in its determination that they had been a minimum of not made out there to exterior events.
The DPC discovered that Meta violated a number of GDPR guidelines associated to the breach. It decided that the corporate didn’t “notify the DPC of a private information breach regarding storage of person passwords in plaintext” with out undue delay and didn’t “doc private information breaches regarding the storage of person passwords in plaintext.” It additionally stated that Meta violated the GDPR by not utilizing acceptable technical measures to make sure the safety of customers’ passwords towards unauthorized processing.
“It’s broadly accepted that person passwords shouldn’t be saved in plaintext, contemplating the dangers of abuse that come up from individuals accessing such information. It have to be borne in thoughts, that the passwords the topic of consideration on this case, are notably delicate, as they’d allow entry to customers’ social media accounts,” DPC’s Deputy Commissioner, Graham Doyle, stated in a press release.
The DPC has additionally given the corporate a reprimand along with the penalty. We could know extra about what meaning for Meta precisely when the fee publishes its full last determination and different associated data sooner or later.
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