Meta hit with $102 million privacy fine from European Union over 2019 password security lapse

Meta was punished with a 91 million euro fine from the social media giant’s European Union privacy regulator over a security lapse involving passwords for Facebook users. The Irish Data Protection Commission issued the fine following an investigation it opened in 2019 after it was notified by Meta that some passwords had been inadvertently stored internally in plain text. That means they weren’t encrypted and it was possible for employees to search for them. The company said it “took immediate action to fix the error, and there is no evidence that these passwords were abused or accessed improperly."