Facebook has been ordered to pay $5.5 million for creating and storing facial recognition templates of 200,000 local users without proper consent between April 2018 and September 2019, according to South Korea’s government data protection watchdog, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC). Netflix and Google also received reprimands or fines for insufficient privacy protections and violating laws. The Register reports: Another [$22,000] penalty was issued for illegally collecting social security numbers, not issuing notifications regarding personal information management changes, and other missteps. Facebook has been ordered to destroy facial information collected without consent or obtain consent, and was prohibited from processing identity numbers without legal basis. It was also ordered to destroy collected data and disclose contents related to foreign migration of personal information. Zuck’s brainchild was then told to make it easier for users to check legal notices regarding personal information. The fine is the second-largest ever issued by the organization, the largest ever also going to Facebook. In November 2020 the Social Network was fined [$5.7 million] for passing on personal data to other operators without user permission.
Netflix’s fine was a paltry [$188,000], with that sum imposed for collecting data from five million people without their consent, plus another [$2,700] for not disclosing international transfer of the data. Google got off the easiest, with just a “recommendation” to improve its personal data handling processes and make legal notices more precise. The PPIC said it is not done investigating methods of collecting personal information from overseas businesses and will continue with a legal review.
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