Quote:The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta €91 million ($101.56 million) as part of a probe into a security lapse in March 2019, when the company disclosed that it had mistakenly stored users' passwords in plaintext in its systems.

The investigation, launched by the DPC the next month, found that the social media giant violated four different articles under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

To that end, the DPC faulted Meta for failing to promptly notify the DPC of the data breach, document personal data breaches concerning the storage of user passwords in plaintext, and utilize proper technical measures to ensure the confidentiality of users' passwords.

Meta originally revealed that the privacy transgression led to the exposure of a subset of users' Facebook passwords in plaintext, although it noted that there was no evidence it was improperly accessed or abused internally.