South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea’s privateness watchdog connected Tuesday fined social media institution Meta 21.6 cardinal won ($15 million) for illegally collecting delicate individual accusation from Facebook users, including information astir their governmental views and intersexual orientation, and sharing it pinch thousands of advertisers.

It was nan latest successful a bid of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities successful caller years arsenic they summation their scrutiny of really nan company, which besides owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles backstage information.

Following a four-year investigation, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected delicate accusation astir about 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, governmental views and whether they were successful same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.

It said nan institution shared nan information pinch astir 4,000 advertisers.

South Korea’s privateness rule provides strict protection for accusation related to individual beliefs, governmental views and intersexual behavior, and bars companies from processing aliases utilizing specified information without nan circumstantial consent of nan personification involved.

The committee said Meta amassed delicate accusation by analyzing nan pages nan Facebook users liked aliases nan advertisements they clicked on.

The institution categorized ads to place users willing successful themes specified arsenic circumstantial religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a head astatine nan committee who led nan investigation connected Meta.

“While Meta collected this delicate accusation and utilized it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this usage successful their information argumentation and did not get circumstantial consent,” Lee said.

Lee besides said Meta put nan privateness of Facebook users astatine consequence by failing to instrumentality basal information measures specified arsenic removing aliases blocking inactive pages. As a result, hackers were capable to usage inactive pages to forge identities and petition password resets for nan accounts of different Facebook users. Meta approved these requests without due verification, which resulted successful information breaches affecting astatine slightest 10 South Korean Facebook users, Lee said.

In September, European regulators deed Meta pinch complete $100 cardinal successful fines for a 2019 information lapse successful which personification passwords were temporarily exposed successful an un-encrypted form.

Meta’s South Korean agency said it would “carefully review” nan commission’s decision, but didn’t instantly supply much comment.

In 2022, nan committee fined Google and Meta a mixed 100 cardinal won ($72 million) for search consumers’ online behaviour without their consent and utilizing their information for targeted advertisements, successful nan biggest penalties ever imposed successful South Korea for privateness rule violations.

The committee said past that nan 2 companies didn’t intelligibly pass users aliases get their consent to cod information astir them arsenic they utilized different websites aliases services extracurricular their ain platforms. It ordered nan companies to supply an “easy and clear” consent process to springiness group much power complete whether to stock accusation astir what they do online.

The committee besides deed Meta pinch a 6.7 cardinal won ($4.8 million) good successful 2020 for providing individual accusation astir itsx users to 3rd parties without consent.