Facebook fined $6.1 million for sharing user info without consent

On Wednesday, a South Korean agency which protects personal information, fined Facebook Inc 6.7 billion  and sought a criminal investigation for providing users’ personal information to other operators without their consent.

The country’s Personal Information Protection Commission said in a statement that it fined Facebook after a probe found that personal information of least 3.3 million of the 18 million Facebook users in Korea were provided to operators other than Facebook without their knowledge. This occurred from May 2012 to June 2018.

The commission said, when someone uses another operator’s service through Facebook’s log-in, the personal information of the user’s Facebook friends is provided to other operators without their consent.

The Personal Information Protection Commission said it will refer Facebook Ireland Ltd to the country’s prosecution for a criminal investigation as they are the recipient of the fine.

“We have cooperating as much as possible throughout the investigation process, we regret that the Personal Information Protection Commission has sought a criminal investigation,” a Seoul-based Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement.

She declined further comments as Facebook hasn’t yet fully reviewed the details of the decision.

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