Facebook fined for violating privacy of 200,000 South Koreans

Facebook was fined USD 5.5m by South Korea's data privacy regulator PIPC for creating and storing facial recognition templates of 200,000 local users without consent. 

The South Korean government’s data protection watchdog, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), ordered Facebook to pay a fine of 6.46 billion won (approximately USD 5.5 million) for creating and storing facial recognition templates of 200,000 local users without proper consent between April 2018 and September 2019.

In addition, Facebook was issued a penalty of 26 million won (approximately USD 22,000) for illegally collecting social security numbers, not issuing notifications regarding personal information management changes, and other missteps.

Facebook was ordered to destroy the facial information it had collected and was prohibited from processing identity numbers without a legal basis. 

The fine was the second-largest ever issued by the PIPC.

➖ November 2020. South Korea's PIPC fined Facebook for passing on personal data to other operators without user permission.