Ireland fines Instagram 405 million euros for sharing children’s data

Specifically, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Instagram for sharing the email addresses and phone numbers of children who were registered as a company or creator.

The decision to sanction was approved by the Irish Data Protection Commission late last week, but details have yet to be released.

The DPC has imposed a €405 million fine on Instagram, making it the second largest fine in history related to rule violations. The incident was discovered in the summer of 2021, when Instagram automatically shared the contact details of children if they had a business or creator account.

The agency’s investigation, which begins in 2021, focuses on child users between the ages of 13 and 17.

These children are allowed to set up and operate business accounts on the Instagram platform, through which contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses are also made public.

Instagram is one of the social networks used by many young users. (Photo: Reuters)

This is believed to have affected millions of children across the European Union, however the DPC did not provide specific figures. Basically, sharing children’s contact details means adults can contact them.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Meta (which owns Instagram) said: “This investigation focuses on old settings that we updated over a year ago and have since released many new features to help keep teens safe and their information private.”

According to Facebook’s parent company, anyone under the age of 18 is set to automatically set up their account to be private when they sign up for Instagram. So only people they know can see what they post, and adults can’t message unfollowed teen accounts.

There is no word yet on the fine on the DPC’s website as the agency plans to publish all the details next week. Before Instagram, Amazon was also fined by DPC up to 746 million euros for acts related to handling customer data. In addition, Meta is currently facing six other investigations with high fines.