Meta has been fined 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million) by South Korea’s privacy watchdog for illegally collecting Facebook users’ sensitive personal information, including information about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with advertisers without their consent.
The country’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Meta collected information such as religious affiliation, political views and same-sex marital status on about 980,000 local Facebook users and shared it with 4,000 advertisers.
“Specifically, it was found that behavioral information, such as the pages users ‘like’ on Facebook and the ads they clicked on, was analyzed to create and manage ad themes related to sensitive information,” it said. PIPC. said in a press statement.
These themes classified users as adherents of a particular religion, identifying them as gay or transgender or as defectors from North Korea, the report added.
The agency accused Meta of handling such sensitive information without a proper legal basis and that it did not ask users’ consent beforehand.
He also criticized the tech giant for failing to take security measures to protect inactive accounts, thereby allowing attackers to request password resets for those accounts by providing fake credentials. Meta approved such requests without sufficient verification of fake IDs, leading to the leak of personal information of 10 South Korean users.
“Going forward, the Privacy Commission will continue to monitor whether Meta complies with the adjustment requirements and will do everything possible to protect the personal information of our citizens by applying the protection law without discrimination to global companies that provide services to domestic users.” – said the regulator.
Meta, in a statement shared with the Associated Press, said he would “carefully review” the commission’s decision.
