Meta fined over privacy breach

Irish regulators slapped Facebook parent Meta with a $277 million fine Monday, the company's latest punishment for breaching strict European Union data privacy rules.

The watchdog opened an investigation last year into news reports that data on more than 533 million users was found dumped online. The data was found on a website for hackers and included names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, locations, birth dates and email addresses for people from more than 100 countries, according to the reports.

Meta said the data had been “scraped” from Facebook using tools designed to help people find their friends through phone numbers using search and contact import features. The watchdog said it investigated scraping carried out between May 2018 and September 2019.

The company said it had “cooperated fully” with the Irish watchdog.

“We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers,” Meta said in a statement. “Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules.”