The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (MPIL) \u20ac91 million ($100 million) for storing the passwords of hundreds of millions of users in plaintext, violating data protection regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2019, Meta disclosed that it had inadvertently stored some users’ passwords in plaintext on its internal systems, without encrypting them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems. This caught our attention because our login systems are designed to mask passwords using techniques that make them unreadable.” reported Meta<\/a>. “We have fixed these issues and as a precaution we will be notifying everyone whose passwords we have found were stored in this way.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has today announced its final decision following an inquiry into Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (MPIL). This inquiry was launched in April 2019, after MPIL notified the DPC that it had inadvertently stored certain passwords of social media users in \u2018plaintext\u2019 on its internal systems (i.e. without cryptographic protection or encryption).” reads DPC’s statement<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Pierluigi Paganini<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
(<\/strong>SecurityAffairs<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2013<\/strong>\u00a0hacking, Facebook<\/a>)<\/strong>