Meta's South Korean office has addressed the decision and said that it would "carefully review" it.

On Tuesday, Meta was fined by the South Korean privacy watchdog for illegally collecting the personal information of 980,000 Facebook users without their consent.

It was basically tracking user activity, checking which posts or pages they liked or what ads they clicked on to understand their likes and dislikes.

The data collection started sometime in July 2018 and went on until March 2022.

Every company collects data from its users. However, they have to be transparent about it and disclose it through their privacy policy. However, Facebook only vaguely mentions its data collection practices, leaving most users unaware of the real situation.

The problem doesn't end here. The company was also accused of risking user privacy by failing to implement basic security measures.

Hence, after a 4-year investigation led by Lee Eun Jung (a director of the Commission), the Personal Information Protection Commission imposed a fine of 21.6 billion won ($15 million).

Meta didn't say much about the decision. Its South Korean office simply said that it would "carefully review" the commission's decision.

This isn't the first time that Meta has gotten into trouble with the Personal Information Protection Commission.

This is the biggest ever fine imposed on any company for privacy violation in South Korea. This time too, the Commission accused the companies of not being transparent with its users.

It said even if they want to engage in such tracking and data collection practices, they need to inform their users and obtain clear consent.

South Korea isn't the only country that has imposed fines on Meta for its poor data handling. Norwegian regulator Datatilsynet imposed a $100K daily fine on Meta in July 2023 for illegally harvesting physical locations and other data such as location, interests, and browsing habits without users' consent.

Meta also had to make a $1.4 billion settlement in the Texas facial recognition lawsuit, where the company was accused of scanning and studying Facebook users' faces through its 'tag' feature, without any consent.

By these series of events, it is quite clear that 'user consent' is only practiced on paper by the social media giant. Unless it is pulled up by a regulator, the company doesn't seem to care about how it handles users' data.