South Korea Fines Meta Platforms for Data Misuse

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea has ordered Facebook owner Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) to pay 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million) in fines after finding it had collected sensitive user data and provided it to advertisers without a legal basis, according to Seoul's data protection agency.

The U.S. tech giant obtained information from about 980,000 South Korean Facebook users on issues such as their religion, political views, and sexuality while failing to seek consent from users, the Personal Information Protection Commission stated in a release on Tuesday.

The information was then utilized by approximately 4,000 advertisers, the agency reported.

A Meta Korea official declined to comment on the matter.

"Specifically, it has been found that (Meta) analyzed user behavior data such as pages they liked and advertisements they clicked on Facebook and created and managed advertising themes related to sensitive information," the commission explained.

This included categorizing users as North Korean defectors, following a certain religion, or identifying as transgender or gay, according to the agency.

Moreover, Meta had also unfairly denied a request by users to access their personal information and failed to prevent data leaks affecting around 10 South Koreans due to hackers, the agency noted.

($1 = 1,379.5200 won)