Facebook has been fined $277 million in Europe over a data-scraping investigation

Ireland’s data protection regulator on Monday fined social media giant Facebook $277 million, bringing the total fine it has imposed on parent company Meta to about $1.04 billion.

The fine stemmed from an investigation begun last year into the discovery of a collected set of personal data scraped off Facebook and made available online between May 2018 and September 2019.

Facebook has also been asked to take a number of corrective actions.

Meta said it fully cooperated with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s investigation and made changes to its systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape its features in this way using phone numbers.

Monday’s fine is the fourth the DPC has imposed on one of Meta’s companies. It is Meta’s leading data protection authority within the European Union and has 13 other requests to the social media group.

In September, regulators slapped their Instagram subsidiary with a record $420 million fine, which Meta plans to appeal. Meta added in its statement on Monday that it was reviewing the decision regarding the latest fine.

The DPC regulates Apple, Google, Twitter, Tiktok and other tech giants because of the location of their EU headquarters in Ireland. There are currently 40 open inquiries from such companies.

The regulator has the power to fine up to 4% of a company’s global turnover under the EU General Data Protection Regulation’s “one stop shop” rule introduced in 2018.

The DPC said mitigating factors in Monday’s decision – which had been endorsed by all other relevant EU regulators – included the actions taken by Facebook.

“We will continue to do so until behavior changes,” Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon told Irish national broadcaster RTE on Monday.

Meta shares are down nearly 2% on Monday.