South Korea Fines Meta for Illegal User Data Collection

AFP/APP

Seoul: Meta, the US-based tech giant, has been fined 21.6 billion won ($15.6 million) by South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission for illegally collecting sensitive data from nearly one million South Korean Facebook users and sharing it with advertisers.

The commission revealed that Meta used information on users’ sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and political views without explicit consent to create targeted ads.

Meta has been ordered to establish legal grounds for processing sensitive data and implement improved safety measures for user privacy.