Meta found to have exposed info on North Korean defectors to advertisers

Meta has added another privacy sanction to its extensive collection: South Korea’s data protection agency fined the social media giant around $15.7 million for processing sensitive user data and passing it to advertisers without a proper legal basis, Reuters reports.

Seoul’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) found Facebook’s parent collected information from about 980,000 users, on sensitive topics such as politics, sexuality and religion, without obtaining their permission. It then shared it with some 4,000 advertisers in violation of local data protection rules.

Meta obtained the sensitive behavioral data bpy analyzing pages users had liked and ads they’d clicked on, among other tracking and profiling methods. PIPC said examples of sensitive info the company compiled included users being categorised as North Korean defectors; following a certain religion; or identifying as transgender or gay.

It also unfairly declined a user data access request; and failed to prevent data on a small number of users being exposed to hackers.