The latest data analysed by Atlas VPN revealed that as of December 2022, companies paid a total of €2.83bn (£2.48bn) in 1,401 cases of violating various data protection laws.
Of that amount, GDPR fines in the last year totalled €832m (£731m), a 36 per cent decrease from the previous year.
The most shocking part of the report, however, was the severity of the charges imposed on a single entity – Meta. Overall, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp was ordered to pay an amount equal to 80 per cent of all fines imposed by the EU, over its data protection practices.
The largest fine imposed upon Meta was worth €405m (£355m). It was imposed by the Data Protection Commission (DPC), an authority for GDPR enforcement in Ireland, on 5 September 2022, over issues regarding the processing of personal data pertaining to child users on Instagram.
The DPC ruled Meta had allowed children's email addresses and phone numbers to be publicly exposed...