Facebook owner is hit with record £1BILLION fine for mishandling users’ information

META has been hit by a record £1billion fine for mishandling Facebook users’ data.

The penalty – from Irish regulators – is the biggest handed down since the EU introduced strict data privacy rules five years ago.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said that Meta had breached part of the European General Data Protection Regulation rules for the way in which it moved data of European Facebook users to servers in the US.

In response, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, the firm’s third- in- command, branded the decision ‘flawed and unjustified’ – highlighting how similar data transfers continued to go to China that were largely unchecked.

The probe, led by the Irish privacy watchdog, is the latest in a long- running clash between Washington and Brussels over their contrasting privacy laws.

Concerns have been raised that the trans-Atlantic data flows could leave Europeans exposed to the US’s far weaker protections – and potentially spying by US government agencies.

Companies had long been allowed to transfer data to help them run their businesses, but only on a promise that it would be protected as strongly as it would in the EU.

But questions were raised after American whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 that US security agencies were carrying out mass surveillance on American firms. The EU has now ordered Meta to stop transferring the data by October.

The financial penalty of just over a billion pounds beats the £650million fine handed down to Amazon for data protection violations in 2021.

In a statement, Mr Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, and chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead said: ‘This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies transferring data between the EU and US.

‘ We are… disappointed to have been singled out when using the same legal mechanism as thousands of other companies looking to provide services in Europe.’ It added: ‘No country has done more than the US to align with European rules via their latest reforms, while transfers continue largely unchallenged to countries such as China.’

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission initially refused to investigate but were overruled years later by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic are currently scrambling to find a new agreement on how data can be shared across borders.

Meta warned in its latest earnings report that without a legal basis for data transfers, it will be forced to stop offering its products and services in Europe, ‘which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations’.

The social media company might have to carry out a costly and complex revamp of its operations if it is forced to stop shipping user data across the Atlantic.

Meta has a fleet of 21 data centres, according to its website, but 17 of them are in the US. Three others are in the European nations of Denmark, Ireland and Sweden. Another is in Singapore.

Other social media giants are facing pressure over their data practices. TikTok has tried to soothe Western fears about the Chinese- owned short video sharing app’s potential cybersecurity risks with a £1.2billion project to store US user data on Oracle servers.

‘Costly and complex revamp’