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The survey covers the accounts of young people under 18 who open professional accounts, thereby making their data accessible. What the Facebook affiliate is supposed to be preventing.
The social network Instagram, a subsidiary of Facebook, is the target of an investigation in Europe launched by the Irish regulator about the processing of personal data of minor users, according to the British press.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) opened two separate cases last month after receiving complaints that phone numbers and email addresses of young people under the age of 18 were accessible to all users on the network, indicate the BBC and the Sunday Telegraph.
The Irish regulator (the equivalent of the French CNIL) supervises Facebook on behalf of the EU, since the latter has its regional headquarters in Ireland. Neither Facebook nor the DPC had yet followed up on AFP's requests.
The European GDPR as a legal framework
The DPC will determine whether the application has put in place the necessary safeguards to protect user data, especially if they are minors, while you must be at least 13 years old to open an account on Instagram.
The regulator will also verify that the social network complies with the European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) concerning the configuration of profiles and accounts.
The BBC said on Monday that in 2019 data specialist David Stier concluded, after analyzing 200,000 accounts worldwide, that users under the age of 18 had the option too easily to switch to a professional account.
This type of account requires users to make their contact details public, which means that they are visible to everyone on the social network.
