Facebook user data breach yet again? The official Personal Information Protection Commission or PIPC of South Korea has recently fined Facebook a hefty 6.7 billion won or around $6.1 million USD for sharing Facebook account profiles even without having consent of their users. The Korean Communications Commission initially kickstarted the wide investigation back in 2018 before handing everything off to the PIPC just a few months ago.
Facebook user data breach
According to the report of Yonhap News, the official PIPC determined that the popular social network had shared the Facebook account profile of 3.3 million South Korean users, out of the 18 million total, which included their own personal information. The Facebook user data was then shared to other companies even without user content all the way from May 2012 up to June of 2018.
The story was reported by Engadget which stated that the watchdog said that the company had shared people's addresses, dates of birth, names, work experience, relationship statuses, hometowns, with other companies the moment that they would log in. Furthermore, it also said that Facebook could have actually shared the information not just to one but up to to 10,000 other companies.
Facebook account profile compromised
With this being said, it still could not actually say just how much information was being shared exactly due to the fact that Facebook apparently did not provide sufficient relevant documentation. The PIPC also threw in another accusation of the social network submitting certain incomplete or even false documents.
Facebook then denied the said accusations in a statement to the Yonhap news saying that the company did cooperate with the ongoing investigation entirely. This is recorded to be the very first time that the PIPC has given a fine to a social network. However, this is not the very first time that Facebook has found itself in trouble within a foreign country.
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Facebook previous fines
All the way back in 2018, the known Korean Communications Commission gave another fine to the company for 396 million won which is about over $396,000 for intentionally slowing users' connections back in 2016 as well as 2017. Facebook, that time, was able to win the legal battle against the said commission, though, and the given fine was then ultimately rescinded.
According to the TelecomPaper, the Seol Administrative Court gave a ruling back then that the given fine was unlawful. It also came to a conclusion that the company had no intentions to intentionally slow down its service within the country.
The current Facebook user data breach has landed them a hefty fine of $6.1 million USD and although this might be big news in Korea, this is not the very first time that the popular social media has gotten into trouble over user data privacy. When it comes to Facebook, user data breach is one of the most common problems but what's new is that the PIPC's success to demand a fine.
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Written by Urian Buenconsejo
