South Korea Fines Meta $15 Million over Unlawful Collection of Facebook User Data
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – South Korea’s privacy authority has imposed a 21.6 billion won ($15 million) fine on Meta for illegally collecting sensitive information from Facebook users and sharing it with advertisers.
The Personal Information Protection Commission, South Korea’s privacy watchdog, announced on Tuesday that Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, collected sensitive data from around 980,000 Facebook users, including details on their political views, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation, from July 2018 to March 2022.
The data was shared with approximately 4,000 advertisers, according to the commission’s findings after a four-year investigation.
South Korean privacy laws strictly regulate the collection and use of personal information related to political and religious views and sexual behavior, requiring explicit consent from users. The commission said Meta gathered this information by analyzing user interactions, such as liked pages and clicked ads, to identify interests related to specific religions, and North Korean escapee issues.
Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the Meta investigation, explained, “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 also criticized Meta’s inadequate security measures, which allegedly put user privacy at risk. According to the commission, inactive Facebook pages were not properly removed or blocked, allowing hackers to impersonate account holders and request password resets. At least 10 South Korean Facebook users were affected by these breaches, as Meta reportedly approved these reset requests without adequate verification.
In a related incident in September, European regulators fined Meta over $100 million for a 2019 security lapse involving temporarily unencrypted user passwords.
Meta’s South Korean office responded that it would “carefully review” the commission’s decision, though it did not provide additional comments.
This recent penalty follows a 100 billion won ($72 million) fine imposed on Google and Meta in 2022 for tracking user behavior online without consent. South Korea’s privacy commission has repeatedly emphasized the need for companies to implement clearer consent processes to give users more control over their online data.
In 2020, the commission fined Meta 6.7 billion won ($4.8 million) for unauthorized sharing of user information with third parties.