by Samantha Chang at The Western Journal
South Korea’s privacy watchdog slapped historic fines on Big Tech oligopolies Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) for violating user privacy.
In a statement Wednesday, South Korea’s Personal Information and Protection Commission said it fined Google $50 million and Facebook $22 million for illegally tracking their users’ online behavior without their consent.
The combined $72 million fine was the largest penalty ever levied in South Korea for privacy violations, according to the PIPC.
Both Google and Facebook collected private data from users for many years, the Korea Times reported Wednesday.
“Google has had Korean users give their consent without knowledge to such data collection by a default setting since at least 2016 while Meta, the operator of Facebook, has not informed or got consent from users since 2018, according to the watchdog,” the report said…
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