Meta has launched a High Court appeal against the €91 million fine issued by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) in September 2024, calling it "wholly disproportionate." The penalty was imposed following a DPC investigation into the company's password storage practices, which found that Meta had "inadvertently stored certain passwords of social media users in 'plaintext' on its internal systems", a violation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Meta argues that the DPC failed to assess whether the fines were effective and proportionate, claiming they exceeded necessary limits. In addition, the company claims that the DPC breached fair procedures by calculating the fine based on its global turnover without allowing full rights of defence. In its appeal, Meta seeks to quash the DPC's decision and contends that certain sections of the Irish Data Protection Act are unconstitutional. Meta also claims the DPC misinterpreted the GDPR's definition of "personal data breach," as many of the plaintext passwords were not linked to identifiable information and that there was no unauthorised access or disclosure of personal data.
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