South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) has slapped Facebook with a 6.7 billion won (around US$6.1 million) fine for sharing user information without consent. The Korea Communications Commission kickstarted the investigation in 2018 before ultimately handing it off to the PIPC a few months ago. According to Yonhap News, the PIPC determined that the social network shared the personal information of 3.3 million South Korean users (out of a total of 18 million) to other companies without consent from May 2012 to June 2018.
The watchdog said Facebook shared people’s names, addresses, dates of birth, work experience, hometowns and relationship statuses with other companies when they logged in. Further, it said Facebook could have shared that information with up to 10,000 other companies. That said, it couldn’t say how much information was shared exactly, because Facebook apparently didn’t provide relevant documentation. PIPC also accused the social network of submitting incomplete or false documents. Facebook denied the accusation, telling Yonhap News in a statement that it “cooperated with the investigation in its entirety.”
