Record fine for Facebook: Used face recognition without consent 200,000 times

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It's all about privacy: Mark Zuckerberg's second-biggest fine ever. Netflix also has to pay, Google got away with a warning.

Face recognition without consent
South Korea's government data watchdog, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), has issued fines or reprimands to Facebook, Netflix, and Google, as well as orders to correct the routines. PIPC last year revised the law on privacy and these companies have acted in violation of the law.

Facebook alone was ordered to pay 6.46 billion Korean won (almost 50 million kroner) for creating and storing face recognition templates for 200,000 users without obtaining consent. This happened between April 2018 and September 2019.

Illegal collection of social security numbers
Another fine of 26 million won (almost 200,000 kroner) was issued for illegal collection of social security numbers, failure to notify of changes in the handling of personal information, and other errors.

Facebook was ordered to either delete the face information or obtain consent and was banned from processing identity numbers without having a legal basis for it. The company was also ordered to delete collected data and publish data on foreign migration of personal data.

Sold personal information
The fine is the second-largest ever issued by PIPC and also the largest went to Facebook. In November 2020, Facebook was fined 6.7 billion won (50 million kroner) for transferring personal information to other operators without the users' permission.

Netflix got cheaper
Netflix's fine was a modest 220 million won (1.6 million kroner) for collecting data from five million people without consent, plus another 3.2 million won (23,000 kroner) for not disclosing international transfer of the data.

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