Last year various EU businesses contributed to fines equally over €830 million for General Data Protection Regulation.
This data which was analysed by Atlas VPN, notes that as of December 2022, companies had paid a total of €2.83 billion in 1401 cases. These instances were regarding violations of various data protection laws. Out of that figure, GDPR fines in 2022 totalled €832 million which while huge, is 36% lower than the figure paid in 2021.
However, despite the sum number being lower the severity of some of the charges stands out. One company that appears regularly is Meta.
Meta meets fines
While the total sum fines stand at €832 million, Meta was over €670 million for GDPR violations in 2022. This means of all the fines issued, 80% of those were paid by Meta alone. For a company as huge as Meta and one that holds so much of the population’s sensitive data, it’s quite an alarming revelation.
In Q3 of 2022, the largest sum violations were recorded as businesses had been penalised by €430 million. Three of the four quarters of 2022 saw an increased sum in violations in comparison to the year before.
The majority of the penalties accumulated throughout 2022 were all paid by Meta. The Data Protection Commission imposed a €450 fine in light of issues that saw teens personal data being shared. Email addresses and phone numbers were all exposed as teens had been able to access Instagram business account functions.
Data protection importance
Facebook faced an €18.6M GDPR fine when data breaches from 2018 put 30 million users at risk. In addition, the DPC issues a reprimand and an order to ensure Meta would bring its processing into compliance. To date, it is noted that Meta has paid roughly €1 billion in GDPR violations.
While changes in the system and an ever growing online world make compliance a gigantic task, it’s incredibly important that users’ data is kept safe. With a massive amount of fines issued last year, it will be interesting to see if the changes made by Meta will see a much-needed drop in violations.
Image credit to FLY:D
Paige Cook is a writer with a multi-media background. She has experience covering video games and technology and also has freelance experience in video editing, graphic design, and photography. Paige is a massive fan of the movie industry and loves a good TV show, if she is not watching something interesting then she's probably playing video games or buried in a good book. Her latest addiction is virtual photography and currently spends far too much time taking pretty pictures in games rather than actually finishing them.
