Instagram has been fined 405 million euros ($402 million) by Ireland’s data privacy regulator following an investigation into its handling of children’s data, a spokesperson for the watchdog said.
The investigation centered on the issue child users aged between 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 (DPC), the lead regulator of Instagram’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc (META.O).
Instagram plans to appeal against the fine, a spokesperson for parent company Meta said in an emailed statement. According to the statement Instagram disagrees with how the fine was calculated and is carefully reviewing the decision.
The social media platform updated its settings over a year ago and has since released new features to help protect teens and their data, the spokesperson added.
The DPC regulates Facebook, Apple, Google and other technology giants due to the location of their EU headquarters in Ireland. It has launched more than a dozen investigations into Meta companies, including Facebook and WhatsApp.
Last year WhatsApp fined a record 225 million euros for failing to conform with EU data rules in 2018.
The Irish regulator finalized a draft ruling in the Instagram investigation in December and shared it with other EU regulators under the bloc’s “one stop shop” system of regulating large multinationals.