A group of Facebook users in South Korea is pushing to sue the tech giant for passing users' information to other companies without their consent, judicial sources said.
According to the sources, the local law firm Jihyang and the Jinbo Network Center, a civic group advocating for people's information rights, are gathering plaintiffs willing to participate in a mass legal action by the end of May.
In November last year, the country's Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Facebook violated the country's law by providing personal information of at least 3.3 million of the total 18 million users here to third parties from May 2012 to June 2018.
The leaked data included educational backgrounds, careers, places of birth and relationship statuses, as well as information on friends, according to the PIPC, reports Yonhap news agency.
The watchdog fined the company $6 million and filed a criminal complaint against it on data breach charges. It also found the social media giant submitted fabricated documents during the investigation.
"The right to self-determine the usage of personal information should be strictly protected under the law as part of basic human rights," Jihyang said, calling the continuous "law-breaking activities" by IT giants, including Facebook, "a very serious problem."
In a separate case, over 500 million Facebook users worldwide have recently suffered a data breach, sparking concerns over the company's data security.
The personal data of nearly 533 million (53.3 crore) Facebook users, including 61 lakh Indians, were leaked online after a hacker posted the details on a digital forum.
The leaked data included Facebook ID numbers, profile names, email addresses, location information, gender details, job data, and other details.
Facebook said the data was old.
"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," a Facebook spokesperson had said in a statement.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dear Reader,
Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.
We, however, have a request.
As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.
Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.
Digital Editor
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU