Facebook often gets in more trouble in Europe over privacy violations than it does here in the States. The latest example of that occurred this week when the social media giant got slapped with a huge €265 million fine in Ireland for allowing Facebook user data to be scraped.

According to Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, 1.3 million Irish Facebook users had their data — including phone numbers, email addresses, and more — collected by bad actors and published online. For its part, Facebook’s parent company Meta did not say whether it would appeal this fine, but did try to defend itself by saying it took action at the time to protect users.

“We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers,” Meta said in a statement. “Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules and we will continue working with our peers on this industry challenge. We have cooperated fully with the Irish Data Protection Commission on this important issue.”

This is a gigantic punishment for Facebook, and because the company’s European headquarters are in Ireland, it could also affect how it does business around the world. These users may not get their data back, but at least Facebook is paying the price for allowing it to be scraped.

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