FB directed to pay USD 257 per victim over personal data breach

30 October 2021, 12:33 pm

The South Korean state watchdog on personal information protection on Friday recommended the operator of Facebook to pay 300,000 won ($256.70) in compensation to each of 181 users demanding damages for the provision of their personal information to third parties without consent.

The recommendation to Meta Platforms was made by the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC)’s dispute mediation panel in charge of settling a dispute between the operator and Korean users of Facebook over the platform’s breach of users’ personal data.

The state watchdog in November concluded that Facebook passed personal data of at least 3.3 million of its total 18 million Korean users to third parties without the users’ consent between May 2012 and June 2018.

The leaked data included the lists of the users’ Facebook friends.

The global platform giant was fined 6.7 billion won for the privacy law violations at that time, reports Yonhap news agency.

In response, a group of local Facebook users collectively filed for a damage relief process with the PIPC in April, seeking financial compensation and the disclosure of information on which personal data were leaked and to whom, from the operator of Facebook.

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