Ireland’s data privacy regulator has agreed to impose a record fine of 405 million euros ($402 million) on the social network Instagram following an investigation into its handling of children’s data, a spokesman said.
The investigation, which began in 2020, focused on underage users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were allowed to trade business accounts, which made it easy to post their phone number and/or email address. of the users.
“We made our final decision last Friday and it contains a fine of €405 million,” said a spokesman for the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, which is the main regulator of Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc.
Meta’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Commissioner regulates Facebook, Apple, Google and other tech giants due to the location of their EU headquarters in Ireland. He has opened more than a dozen investigations into Meta companies, including Facebook and WhatsApp.
Last year, WhatsApp was fined a record €225 million for failing to comply with EU data rules in 2018.
The Irish regulator completed a draft ruling on the Instagram investigation in December and shared it with other European Union regulators under the bloc’s “one stop shop” system for regulating large multinationals.
Full details of the decision will be published next week, the Commissioner’s spokesman said.