South Korea’s personal information protection commission (PIPC) held its 18th plenary meeting, Yonhap reported Friday, meta, an American Internet company, has been fined more than 21.6 billion won (111 million yuan) for violating South Korea’s personal information protection law.
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According to the survey results, from July 2018 to March 2022, meta collected sensitive information about the religious, political and sexual orientations of nearly 980,000 South Korean users from its facebook“Profile” function. According to the law on the protection of personal information, information relating to one’s thoughts and beliefs, political opinions, sexual life and so on are classified as sensitive information that should be closely protected and are prohibited in principle from being processed. However, according to the survey, META provided many advertisers with sensitive personal information without permission, and about 4,000 advertisers used it for commercial purposes.
According to a report by the South Korean daily economic news, “The Meta specifically asks users to fill in their religious and political views in the Facebook profile section, and then, based on the information collected, places targeted ads related to sensitive information,” the researchers said, meta in the case of no legitimate reasons to deny users access to personal information, violating the rights of users. Meta also failed to take security measures such as deleting or shutting down websites that had been deactivated, resulting in the leakage of personal information of 10 South Korean users.
Although Meta reportedly discontinued the collection of sensitive information in the“Personal profile” function in August 2021 and voluntarily abolished sensitive information-related advertising in March 2022, however, PIPC confirmed that it had violated the law and imposed a fine. This is also the fifth time since 2020 that Meta has been fined by South Korea for violating the personal information protection law, with the cumulative amount of fines paid reaching about 73 billion won.