Disclosed Mar 21, 20197 years agoSettled
Hundreds of millions of passwords stored in plaintext; Irish DPC fine of EUR 91M
Facebook admitted in March 2019 that it had stored hundreds of millions of account passwords in plaintext on internal systems. Ireland's DPC found security and breach notification failures and fined Meta EUR 91M.
What is known
| People affected | Not stated in the sources we have |
|---|---|
| Disclosed | Mar 21, 2019 |
| Attack | Exposed data |
| Data exposed | Passwords |
| Sector | Tech · US |
| Status | Settled |
| Lawsuit or fine | EUR 91M Irish DPC fine (Sept 2024) (about $101M) |
Sources
| Source | |
|---|---|
| Facebook admits it stored hundreds of millions of account passwords in plaintexttechcrunch.com · News | News |
| Irish Data Protection Commission fines Meta Ireland EUR 91 milliondataprotection.ie · Regulator | Regulator |
Notices filed
| Where | Filed | People |
|---|---|---|
| Researchtotal | Mar 21, 2019 |
Other breaches at Facebook
| Breach | Affected | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disclosed Feb 22, 2024Feb 22, 20242 years agoHackingUnverified | Feb 22, 20242 years ago | Hacking | Tech | Unverified | 77Kacct |
| Twelve 2018 Facebook breach notifications; Irish DPC fine of EUR 17MMar 15, 20224 years ago | Mar 15, 20224 years ago | Not stated | Tech | Settled | Unknown |
| Scraped dataset of 533M Facebook users posted online; Irish DPC fine of EUR 265MApr 3, 20215 years agoScraping | Apr 3, 20215 years ago | Scraping | Tech | Settled | 533M |
| Exposed server holds 419 million records linking Facebook IDs to phone numbersSep 4, 20197 years agoScrapingUnverified | Sep 4, 20197 years ago | Scraping | Tech | Unverified | Unknown |
| 2018 View As token theft hit 29M Facebook accounts; Irish DPC fines of EUR 251MSep 28, 20187 years agoHacking | Sep 28, 20187 years ago | Hacking | Tech | Settled | 29M |
| Data of up to 87 million Facebook users improperly shared with Cambridge AnalyticaMar 17, 20188 years agoVendor breach | Mar 17, 20188 years ago | Vendor breach | Tech | Settled | 87M |
History of this record
- 2026-09-25 · added · seed source
First seen 2026-09-25 (Research), confirmed by Research. Record counts are as reported. Not legal advice.