Meta is the company that collects the most fines for non-compliance with the GDPR in the European Union. A statistic that will surprise few people given the number of scandals on this subject that have been piling up in recent years for Mark Zuckerberg’s company.
Meta: Champion of data theft
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a European Union regulation that came into force on May 25, 2018, more than six years ago now. A law whose sole objective is to protect the personal data of European citizens as best as possible through strict rules on the collection, processing, retention and sharing of this data.
Unfortunately, the big American tech companies don’t seem to want to join in. To overcome this problem, European data protection authorities are trying as best they can to impose fines for each breach. A colossal task that sometimes bears fruit.
In a recent article published by statistawe discover an up-to-date ranking of the companies that have collected the most fines in recent years for non-compliance and violation of the GDPR. At the top of the list, we find Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) with a total of 2.2 billion euros in fines in five years. A colossal amount when we realize that the second, Amazon, reaches “only” 746 million euros. Three times more for Meta.
The third is TikTok with 345 million, followed by Uber and its 290 million. Uber, which just received its first fine of 290 million euros on Monday, August 26, 2024 by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) for non-compliance with the aforementioned GDPR. We note the absence of Apple, which makes the confidentiality of its users its priority, and the “good position” of Google with its 90 million euros in fines.
In total, that’s 4.6 billion euros in fines imposed in six years, not counting all those that are not made public. An amount that could happily climb if each error was really pinned down. Unfortunately, the fines are still not substantial enough. Although the figures mentioned above are dizzying, 2 billion euros is not much for a company like Meta which made 39 billion in profits in 2023 alone.
