Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has been hit with a 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million) fine by South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission.
The penalty comes after an investigation revealed that Meta collected sensitive user data without legal authorization and shared it with advertisers.
The commission found that Meta gathered personal details, including religious beliefs, political opinions, and sexual orientation, from approximately 980,000 South Korean Facebook users without obtaining proper consent.
These sensitive data points were then leveraged by around 4,000 advertisers to target users more effectively.
How Meta analysed data
According to the commission’s statement on Tuesday, Meta analyzed users’ behaviour on Facebook, such as pages they liked and ads they clicked, to develop advertising themes based on their sensitive information.
- The profiling included labelling users as North Korean defectors, members of specific religious groups, or…