Meta had to pay a fine of 91 million euros. Ireland's data protection authority penalizes storing millions of Facebook and Instagram passwords in plain text. It reports “Reuters“.
Ireland's data protection supervisory authority DPC Ireland has fined Meta Platforms Ireland Limited €91 million. Meta had stated in 2019 that it accidentally stored Facebook and Instagram users' passwords in plain text, reports “heise online“. Theoretically, thousands of employees could access it.
The risk of misuse is too high
DPC Assistant Commissioner Graham Doyle highlighted that plaintext passwords pose significant risks: “It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext due to the risk of misuse by those accessing the data.”
“heise online” further reported that the DPC views the incident as a serious violation of the organization's obligations under the GDPR. Apart from that, Meta is said to have reported the incident late and did not document it properly.