DUBLIN, Sept 27 (Reuters) - The lead European Union

privacy regulator fined social media giant Meta 91

million euros ($101.5 million) on Friday for inadvertently

storing some users' passwords without protection or encryption.

The inquiry was opened five years ago after Meta notified

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) that it had stored

some passwords in 'plaintext'. Meta publicly acknowledged the

incident at the time and the DPC said the passwords were not

made available to external parties.

"It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be

stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise

from persons accessing such data," Irish DPC Deputy Commissioner

Graham Doyle said in a statement.

The DPC is the lead EU regulator for most of the top U.S.

internet firms due to the location of their EU operations in the

country.

It has so far fined Meta a total of 2.5 billion euros for

breaches under the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation's

(GDPR), introduced in 2018, including a record 1.2 billion euro

fine in 2023 that Meta is appealing.

($1 = 0.8966 euros)