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

[Cpvr]

South Korea’s privacy regulator has fined Meta 21.6 billion won (around $15 million) for unlawfully collecting and sharing sensitive personal data from Facebook users, including information about political beliefs and sexual orientation, with thousands of advertisers. This penalty is part of a larger crackdown by South Korean authorities on Meta’s data practices.



Following a four-year investigation, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) found that from July 2018 to March 2022, Meta collected private information from nearly 980,000 Facebook users, including details about their religion, political affiliations, and relationships, including same-sex unions, and shared this data with around 4,000 advertisers. South Korea’s privacy laws impose strict regulations on the collection and use of data related to personal beliefs and sensitive information without explicit consent.



The PIPC revealed that Meta gathered this data by analyzing the Facebook pages users engaged with and the ads they interacted with, identifying interests in topics like specific religions, LGBTQ+ issues, and North Korean defector matters. According to Lee Eun Jung, a PIPC director who led the investigation, Meta only vaguely referenced this data collection in its policies and failed to get explicit consent from users.





Additionally, the commission criticized Meta for weak security practices, which left Facebook users’ privacy vulnerable. By failing to deactivate or secure inactive pages, Meta enabled hackers to exploit these pages to impersonate others and reset passwords without proper identity verification, leading to data breaches affecting at least 10 Facebook users in South Korea.





Meta’s South Korean office responded by stating it would review the commission’s decision but did not provide additional comments. This is not Meta’s first fine in South Korea; in 2022, the PIPC fined Google and Meta a combined 100 billion won ($72 million) for tracking user behavior without proper consent, and in 2020, Meta was fined 6.7 billion won ($4.8 million) for sharing user data with third parties without consent.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/meta-facebook-south-korea-fine-privacy-9a1e9500d0462112c422e0612f1f7085

 

[ActionAce]

I like this news. Meta is making huge money off the users information. At least South Korea takes a little from the huge money reserved . Jokes apart, it's a significant step towards protecting the users' privacy. To me, Meta's actions were totally unacceptable because they are fond of collecting people’s sensitive data without consent. I think I need to sue them too. Time to rake in some money

 

[Reelz]

It’s a giant strive but $15 million seems relatively too small. I was thinking it would be $15 billion. This explains the importance of explicit consent and data transparency. It's so concerning that Meta could go as far as sharing sensitive information with 4,000 advertisers without the consent of the owners. That's crazy.

 

[Immortal]

In our country, government asked Meta either to register with the government agency or face blockage in the country. meta complied and now it will be easier for the government to penalize meta if something goes wrong

 

[MidnightMuse]

It’s a giant strive but $15 million seems relatively too small.

$15 million is nothing to a company like Meta. They should have gone the Russian way and charged the 15 gazillion dollars.

 

[Alamson]

Meta faces a multiplicity of cases involving data breaches in different countries. Sometimes third parties even hack its system to steal users' data. The company claimed it has strengthen its system to prevent unauthorised data scraping. But I doubt its ability to shut out hackers who are becoming more sophisticated.