Key Takeaways
- Meta has been fined 21.62 billion won (about $15.7 million) by South Korea.
- The acquisition of “sensitive user data” that Meta allegedly provided to advertisers is the subject of the fine.
- More than 950,000 Facebook users in South Korea are alleged to have had their religious, sexual, and political beliefs scraped by Meta.
According to Reuters, Meta was fined about $15.7 million by Seoul’s data protection body, the Personal Information Protection Commission, for gathering user data without consent.
The Commission said in a statement that the information gathered from some 980,000 South Korean Facebook users included information about political opinions, religion, and sexual orientation. Approximately 4,000 advertisers were given access to this data.
According to the Commission, Meta “created and managed advertising themes related to sensitive information” by utilizing information from pages users liked or ads they clicked on.
The internet giant failed to get users’ explicit agreement and only made “vague mentions” of the usage of this data in its data policy, according to Lee Eun Jung, a director at the Commission who oversaw the Meta probe.
Additionally, Meta allegedly denied user requests to view their personal data and did nothing to stop hackers from leaking the information of about ten South Korean Facebook users.
Although it declined to comment further, Meta’s South Korean office stated that it will “carefully review” the decision.
Meta’s Data Collection Crisis Is Not the First
The fines that Meta has received for its data harvesting methods are by no means new.
For following user behavior online without consent and utilizing the information for targeted advertisements, Meta and Google were fined a total of $72 million by the Commission in 2022. This was the highest penalty ever given in South Korea for infringement of privacy laws.
In January 2023, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta about $450 million for violating EU data laws by utilizing user data from Facebook and Instagram to display tailored advertisements. The DPC ruled at the time that Meta could not “force consent” by requiring users to assent to this use of their data, which would have forced them to leave the platform.
