Meta Fined $263 Million for 2018 Facebook Security Breach: A Breakdown and Its Implications
Meta Fined $263M for 2018 Facebook Breach. GDPR enforcement highlights data privacy concerns.
Matilda
Meta Fined $263 Million for 2018 Facebook Security Breach: A Breakdown and Its Implications
In a significant development for data privacy and user security, Meta (formerly Facebook) was fined €251 million (approximately $263 million) by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) in December 2024. This hefty penalty stemmed from a major security breach on Facebook that occurred in 2018, impacting millions of users across the European Union (EU). This article delves into the details of the breach, the DPC's reasoning behind the fine, and the broader implications for Meta and online privacy as a whole. The 2018 Facebook Security Breach: A Chronology July 2017: Facebook introduces a new "View As" feature within its video upload functionality. This feature allowed users to preview their profile as others might see it. Vulnerability Exposed: A critical flaw existed in the design of this feature. Malicious actors discovered they could exploit this vulnerability in conjunction with Facebook's "Happy Birthday Composer" tool to generate user tokens. These token…