Ireland slaps Instagram with $400m fine over kids’ data

 Ireland's data privacy regulator has agreed to levy a record fine of 405 million euros ($402 million) against social network Instagram following an investigation into its handling of children's data, a spokesperson for the watchdog said.

Instagram plans to appeal against the fine, a spokesperson for its parent company, Meta, said in an emailed statement.

The investigation, which started in 2020, focused on child users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were allowed to operate business accounts,

which facilitated the publication of the user’s phone number and/or email address.

“We adopted our final decision last Friday and it does contain a fine of 405 million euro,” said the spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, the lead regulator of Instagram and Facebook’s (FB) parent company.

Full details of the decision will be published next week, he said.

Instagram updated its settings over a year ago and has since released new features to keep teens safe and their information private, the Meta spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said Instagram disagrees with how the fine was calculated and is carefully reviewing the decision.

The DPC regulates Facebook, Apple, Google and other technology giants due to the location of their EU headquarters in Ireland. It has opened over a dozen investigations into Meta companies, including Facebook and WhatsApp.

WhatsApp was last year fined a record 225 million euros for failing to conform with EU data rules in 2018.

The Irish regulator completed a draft ruling in the Instagram investigation in December and shared it with other European Union regulators under the bloc’s “one stop shop” system of regulating large multinationals.

The watchdog has a raft of other inquiries into Meta-owned companies. Last year, it fined WhatsApp 225 million euros ($21.8m) for breaching rules on transparency about sharing people’s data with other Meta companies.

Last year, Instagram announced that it was pausing plans to develop an app for kids under 13 years of age.

There have been several probes in the US focusing on Instagram’s impact on young kids. The social media site has been accused of being a threat to children’s physical and mental health and exploiting youngsters in the interest of profit.

(Agencies)