The $277 million fine was announced today by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the tech giant’s lead regulator for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Facebook’s parent, Meta, has been hit with another hefty penalty for breaching European data protection law.

The €265 million ($277 million) fine was announced today by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the tech giant’s lead regulator for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The Data Protection Commission said Meta Platforms infringed sections of the EU rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, that require technical and organisational measures aimed at protecting user data.

The watchdog opened an investigation last year into news reports that data on more 533 million users was found dumped online. The data was found on a website for hackers and included names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, locations, birthdates and email addresses for people from more than 100 countries, according to the reports.

Meta said the data had been “scraped” from Facebook using tools designed to help people find their friends through phone numbers using search and contact import features. The watchdog said it investigated the automated scraping carried out between May 2018 and September 2019.

The company said it had “cooperated fully” with the Irish watchdog.

We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers, Meta said in a statement. Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules.

Along with the fine, the commission said it also imposed on Meta a ‘range of corrective measures,’ which weren’t specified.

When asked if Meta would appeal, a spokesman said: We are still reviewing this decision carefully.

It is the latest in a series of punishments that the Irish watchdog has levied against Meta over the past two years.