• The Facebook penalty is the outcome of an investigation that was launched last year.
• Online access to private information that was scraped from Facebook.
• Facebook claims to have collaborated with authorities to stop data scraping.

On Monday, Ireland's data privacy authority fined social networking giant Facebook an additional EUR 265 million (approximately Rs. 2,250 crore), raising the total amount it has penalised parent company Meta to almost EUR 1 billion (roughly Rs. 2,250 crore). 

The fine was the outcome of an investigation that was opened up last year after it was found that a compiled set of personal information had been taken from Facebook between May 2018 and September 2019 and posted online. Additionally, Facebook was mandated to take a number of corrective actions.

Meta claimed that it had made improvements to its systems during the time in issue, including eliminating the ability to scrape its features in this manner using phone numbers, and had fully cooperated with the investigation by Ireland's Data Privacy Commissioner (DPC). 

The DPC has fined one of Meta's companies four times as of Monday. It is Meta's primary privacy watchdog in the EU and has 13 open inquiries into the social media industry. The watchdog issued its Instagram subsidiary a record fine in September of EUR 405 million, or about Rs. 3,435 crore. 

Meta plans to appeal this fine. The decision pertaining to the most recent fine was under review, Meta further stated in its statement on Monday. Due to the fact that the EU headquarters of these internet behemoths are in Ireland, the DPC regulates companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, Tiktok, and others.

There are presently 40 open investigations into these companies, including the 13 involving Meta. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 'One Stop Shop' regime established by the EU in 2018, the regulator has the authority to levy fines of up to 4 percent of a company's global revenue. 

The DPC stated that Facebook's actions were among the mitigating circumstances in Monday's judgement, which had been approved by all other pertinent EU regulators. Helen Dixon, the Data Privacy Commissioner for Ireland (DPC), said to Irish national radio RTE on Monday, 'We'll keep going until the behaviour does change.