South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information
on Facebook users
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[November 05, 2024] By
KIM TONG-HYUNG
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s privacy watchdog on Tuesday
fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for
illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users,
including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and
sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean
authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the
company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private
information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea’s Personal Information
Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive
information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their
religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from
July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea’s privacy law provides strict protection for information
related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and
bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific
consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the
pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such
as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues
related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the
commission who led the investigation on Meta.
“While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for
individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in
their data policy and did not obtain specific consent,” Lee said.
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South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission's director
Lee Eun Jung speaks during a briefing at the government complex in
Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Lee Jung-hun/Yonhap via
AP)
Lee also said Meta put the privacy
of Facebook users at risk by failing to implement basic security
measures such as removing or blocking inactive pages. As a result,
hackers were able to use inactive pages to forge identities and
request password resets for the accounts of other Facebook users.
Meta approved these requests without proper verification, which
resulted in data breaches affecting at least 10 South Korean
Facebook users, Lee said.
In September, European regulators hit Meta with over $100 million in
fines for a 2019 security lapse in which user passwords were
temporarily exposed in an un-encrypted form.
Meta’s South Korean office said it would “carefully review” the
commission’s decision, but didn’t immediately provide more comment.
In 2022, the commission fined Google and Meta a combined 100 billion
won ($72 million) for tracking consumers’ online behavior without
their consent and using their data for targeted advertisements, in
the biggest penalties ever imposed in South Korea for privacy law
violations.
The commission said then that the two companies didn’t clearly
inform users or obtain their consent to collect data about them as
they used other websites or services outside their own platforms. It
ordered the companies to provide an “easy and clear” consent process
to give people more control over whether to share information about
what they do online.
The commission also hit Meta with a 6.7 billion won ($4.8 million)
fine in 2020 for providing personal information about itsx users to
third parties without consent.
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