Meta has been fined 21.62 billion gained ($15.67 million) by South Korea’s information privateness watchdog for illegally gathering delicate private info from Fb customers, together with information about their political beliefs and sexual orientation, and sharing it with advertisers with out their consent.
The nation’s Private Info Safety Fee (PIPC) mentioned Meta gathered info resembling non secular affiliations, political beliefs, and same-sex marital standing of about 980,000 home Fb customers and shared it with 4,000 advertisers.
“Specifically, it was found that behavioral information, such as the pages that users ‘liked’ on Facebook and the ads they clicked on, was analyzed to create and operate advertising topics related to sensitive information,” the PIPC mentioned in a press assertion.
These matters categorized customers as following a sure faith, figuring out them as a homosexual or transgender individual, or being a defector from North Korea, it added.
The company accused Meta of processing such delicate info and not using a correct authorized foundation, and that it didn’t search customers’ consent earlier than doing so.
It additionally known as out the tech big for failing to enact security measures to safe inactive accounts, thereby permitting malicious actors to request password resets for these accounts by submitting pretend identification info. Meta accepted such requests with out adequate verification of the pretend IDs, ensuing within the leak of the non-public info of 10 South Korean customers.
“Going forward, the Personal Information Protection Commission will continue to monitor whether Meta is complying with its corrective order, and will do its best to protect the personal information of our citizens by applying the protection law without discrimination to global companies that provide services to domestic users,” the regulator mentioned.
Meta, in a assertion shared with Related Press, mentioned it is going to “carefully review” the fee’s determination.
