Instagram goes to checkout after nearly two years of investigation.
The social network, a subsidiary of the Meta group, the parent company of Facebook, has been fined a record 405 million euros for failures to process the data of minors, announced Monday the Irish regulator, which acts on behalf of the European Union.
“We adopted our final decision last Friday and it foresees a fine of 405 million euros.
Details will be released next week,” a representative of the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) told AFP.
The ruling is the toughest imposed by this authority since 2018, when the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gave regulators more power to protect consumers from the dominance of Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), equivalent to the French Cnil, supervises on behalf of the EU Facebook, since the latter has its regional headquarters in Ireland.
Accounts opened by default at certain times
The regulator had opened an investigation at the end of 2020, to determine whether the application had put in place the necessary safeguards to protect user data, especially if they are minors, when you must be at least 13 years to open an account on Instagram.
The DPC was particularly concerned that users under the age of 18 were too easily able to switch to a professional account.
This type of account requires users to make their contact information public, which means that it is visible to everyone on Instagram.
The regulator also criticized Instagram that the content of minors' accounts was open by default at certain times to all users and not restricted to only approved subscribers.
A spokesperson for Meta told RTE media that the group intended to appeal, noting that the investigation had looked into settings changed over the past year.
