Reuters reuters.com
Reporting by Charlie Devereux and Aislinn Laing, additional reporting by Emma Pinedo, editing by Andrei Khalip, David Latona and Alexander Smith
MADRID, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Spain's parliament will investigate Meta (META.O), opens new tab for possible privacy violations of its Facebook and Instagram users, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday.
"In Spain, the law is above any algorithm or any large technology platform. And anyone who violates our rights will pay the consequences," Sanchez said in a statement.
The investigation stems from international research that found Meta had used a hidden mechanism to track the web activity of Android device users, Sanchez's office said.
Meta did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Spain's investigation into the U.S. tech giant threatens to further sour relations with Washington, which has rounded on Madrid over its failure to meet NATO spending targets and for its friendliness with Beijing.
President Donald Trump's administration has also criticised the EU's Digital Markets Act, which seeks to curb the power of Big Tech, and the Digital Services Act, which requires large online platforms to tackle illegal and harmful content.
Spain's government said Meta may have violated various European Union laws on security and privacy including its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the ePrivacy Directive, the DMA and the DSA.
Meta, which is led by U.S. billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, will be called to testify before a lower house committee, it added.
The company has had several legal clashes with the European Commission, which in preliminary findings in October said Meta and TikTok had breached their legal obligation to grant researchers adequate access to public data.
The Commission fined Meta 798 million euros ($923 million) in 2024 for abusive practices benefiting Facebook Marketplace while in July last year it charged the company for failing to comply with the DMA in its new pay or consent advertising model.
As Scale AI seeks to reassure customers that their data is secure following Meta's $14.3 billion investment, leaked files and the startup's own contractors indicate it has some serious security holes.
Scale AI routinely uses public Google Docs to track work for high-profile customers like Google, Meta, and xAI, leaving multiple AI training documents labeled "confidential" accessible to anyone with the link, Business Insider found.
Contractors told BI the company relies on public Google Docs to share internal files, a method that's efficient for its vast army of at least 240,000 contractors and presents clear cybersecurity and confidentiality risks.
Scale AI also left public Google Docs with sensitive details about thousands of its contractors, including their private email addresses and whether they were suspected of "cheating." Some of those documents can be viewed and also edited by anyone with the right URL.
Meta has been fined €251 million (around $263 million) in the European Union for a Facebook security breach that affected millions of users, which the
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta €91 million for a 2019 incident wherein the company stored millions of Facebook and Instagram passwords in plain text.
Meta and X have already paused some AI training over same set of concerns.
Meta has removed 63,000 Instagram accounts from Nigeria that were involved in sextortion scams, including a coordinated network of 2,500 accounts linked to 20 individuals targeting primarily adult men in the United States.
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Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, provided customer data to hackers who masqueraded as law enforcement officials, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Apple and Meta provided basic subscriber details, such as a customer’s address, phone number and IP address, in mid-2021 in response to the forged “emergency data requests.” Normally, such requests are only provided with a search warrant or subpoena signed by a judge, according to the people. However, the emergency requests don’t require a court order.
They’re accused of colluding to carve up the advertising market between them
Meta will pay $90 million to settle litigation over Facebook's use of cookies to track users’ internet use even after they had logged off.
