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ARTICLE · 10 OCTOBER 2022

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Instaglum: Instagram Fined €405m Over Children's Data Privacy

Lewis Silkin
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Ireland's supervisory authority has levied a record breaking fine of €405 million against the social media platform Instagram, following an investigation into its handling of children's data privacy.

IrelandPrivacy
Georgia Davies
Georgia Davies
Bryony Long
Bryony Long
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Ireland's supervisory authority has levied a record breaking fine of €405 million against the social media platform Instagram, following an investigation into its handling of children's data privacy.

Background

The fine, the second highest given under the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") (the first being a €746 million penalty against Amazon) and the third fine for a Meta-owned company from the Irish Data Protection Commission ("DPC"), covers alleged violations of privacy laws as a result of Instagram's default account settings for business account users, which allowed children's email addresses and phone numbers to be exposed.

The penalty follows an investigation by the DPC into the social media platform, which began in October 2020. The preliminary decision by the Irish regulator was met with disapproval among concerned supervisory authorities and so was subject to the dispute resolution mechanism under Article 65 of the GDPR, which enables the

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