South Korea's privacy watchdog has fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting and sharing with thousands of advertisers sensitive personal information of Facebook users , including data on their political views and sexual orientation.
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It was the latest in a series of sanctions against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they tighten scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles personal information.
After a four-year investigation, South Korea's Privacy Commission imposed a fine after concluding that Meta illegally collected sensitive information on about 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
He said the company shared the data with about 4,000 advertisers.
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South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political opinions and sexual behavior and prohibits companies from processing or using such data without the consent of the individual involved.
The committee said Meta collected sensitive information by analyzing the pages Facebook users liked or the ads they clicked on.
The company categorized the ads to identify users interested in topics such as specific religions, gay and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean defectors, said Lee Eun Jung, director of the committee that led the investigation at Meta.
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Lee also said that Meta compromised privacy 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 impersonate and request password resets for other Facebook users’ accounts. Meta approved these requests without proper verification, which resulted in breaches that affected at least 10 South Korean Facebook users, Lee said.
Source: abcnews
