Instagram fined €405 Million in EU over children’s privacy

guest · Sep 5, 2022

By Natasha Lomas @riptari - September 5, 2022

A fat fine — of €405 million — is headed Instagram’s way after European Union privacy regulators came to a decision on a long running complaint related to how the social media platform handles children’s data. The penalty is for a breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Meta was contacted for comment on the penalty.
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We understand the final GDPR decision on the Instagram enquiry was sent to Meta, Instagram’s parent, Friday — ahead of formal publication on the websites of the company’s lead data supervisor in the EU, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC); and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), a steering body which helped coordinate a decision review process involving other interested EU data protection authorities — however the size of the penalty for Meta appears to have leaked early, via a report in Politico, which contains the fine figure (which shakes out to around $403M at current currency exchange prices) but no further details of the decision.
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Ireland’s DPC confirmed the level of fine to us. Deputy commissioner, Graham Doyle, told TechCrunch: “We adopted our final decision last Friday and it does contain a fine of €405 million. Full details of the decision will publish next week.”
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guest · Sep 6, 2022

Instagram appealing $400 million fine from Ireland data privacy org over GDPR violations
By Jonathan Greig @jgreigj - September 6, 2022

Instagram said it will be appealing a $400 million fine issued by Ireland’s data privacy watchdog over accusations that the social media giant violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by allowing children as young as 13 to operate business accounts.

A spokesperson for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, disputed the way the fine was calculated, arguing that it “is not in accordance with the text of the GDPR,” resulting in a fine that is significantly larger than other GDPR-related fines.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said it adopted its final decision on Friday and will publish the full details of the decision next week, so it is unclear why Meta believes the fine was incorrectly calculated.
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DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle told The Record that the €405 million fine was the result of an inquiry that began on September 21, 2020 thanks to a tip from a third party and analysis done by DPC researchers.

The inquiry centered on two different issues with how Instagram processed data in Ireland. Users were required to publish phone numbers and/or email address for business accounts run by children between the ages of 13 and 17.
Doyle added that at certain times, Instagram had a user registration system where the accounts of child users were set to “public” by default, thereby making public the social media content of child users. Users had to set the account to “private” manually though the account privacy settings.
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The Meta spokesperson disputed the inquiry, arguing that it “focused on old settings” the company updated about a year ago. The spokesperson added that the company has released a number of new features to “help keep teens safe and their information private.”

“Anyone under 18 automatically has their account set to private when they join Instagram, so only people they know can see what they post, and adults can’t message teens who don’t follow them,” the spokesperson said. “While we’ve engaged fully with the DPC throughout their inquiry, we disagree with how this fine was calculated and intend to appeal it. We’re continuing to carefully review the rest of the decision.”
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