South Korea’s data protection authority has fined Facebook owner Meta Platforms 21.62 billion won after it was found to have collected sensitive user data without legal basis and provided it to advertisers. announced that it had ordered the company to pay $15.67 million.
The Personal Information Protection Commission said in a statement Tuesday that the company obtained information on issues such as religion, political views and sexuality from about 980,000 South Korean Facebook users without seeking consent from users. did.
That information was then used by about 4,000 advertisers, the agency said.
Metakorea officials declined to comment.
The committee said, “Specifically, (Meta) analyzed behavioral data such as pages liked by users and advertisements clicked on Facebook, and created and managed advertising themes related to confidential information. It has become clear,” he said.
This includes, for example, users who are classified as North Korean defectors, adherents to a particular religion, or are transgender or homosexual, authorities said.
Meta also unfairly denied users’ requests for access to their personal information and failed to prevent hackers from leaking data about about 10 South Koreans, the agency said.
(1 dollar = 1,379.5200 won)
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