South Korea has fined Meta a 21.62 billion won for illegally collecting Facebook users’ confidential data, including political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with advertisers without their consent.
According to South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), Meta collected data on the political, religious and marital status of about 980,000 Facebook users in the country. This information was shared with more than 4,000 advertisers, allowing them to create ads targeted at sensitive topics. The data was used, in particular, to identify people by religion, sexual orientation or as citizens fleeing North Korea. The PIPC also found that Meta did not adequately protect inactive accounts, leading to information leaks through fraudulent password change requests for such accounts, the report said. The Meta company promised to carefully study the Commission’s decision.
This is not the first time in the world that Meta has faced problems for its privacy policy. In South Korea, this is another step in strengthening control over the protection of personal data by international technology companies. Due to the large number of cases of data leakage and misuse, the country’s regulators are actively monitoring citizens’ compliance with security and privacy requirements.
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