what people believe:

“we fixed the breach, so we are done”

Ireland's authority fined the notification and the record-keeping separately, after the breach had been remedied.

Irish Data Protection Commissionannounced 17 December 2024€251 million, listed as pending appeallast checked 2 November 2026

The belief above is a common one, stated here in our words. It is not a quotation from the company. This is a very large company, and the amounts do not translate to yours. The structure of the findings does.

01

what happened

In September 2018, Meta’s Irish company reported a breach affecting about 29 million Facebook accounts worldwide, about 3 million of them in the EU and EEA. Unauthorised parties exploited user tokens. According to the authority, it was remedied shortly after discovery.

basis Irish Data Protection Commission, 17 December 2024

02

what the authority found

€251 million, by finding

  • data protection not built into the design€130m
  • too much processed by default€110m
  • incomplete notification€8m
  • breach not documented for verification€3m

basis GDPR Art. 25(1), 25(2), 33(3), 33(5); Irish Data Protection Commission, 17 December 2024

The authority’s list of fines showed this decision as pending appeal when this page was checked, so it may yet change.

basis Irish Data Protection Commission, list of fines

03

why it matters at your size

Two of the four findings need no engineering at all. They concern what you wrote in the form and what you kept in the file, years after the technical fix. A breach log costs nothing to start.

basis GDPR Art. 33(3), 33(5)

check it yourself

fyi Last checked 2 November 2026. This is not legal advice. It is a plain reading of the texts listed on this page, and national law can add to them. Before you rely on it in front of a regulator, an auditor or your board, have a lawyer confirm it for your company. What this means.

your next step

Open your breach log and check that the last entry says what happened, what it affected and what you did about it.