South Korea has ordered Meta Platforms to pay a fine of 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million).

The mentioned decision comes after the specified technology giant was found to have collected sensitive user data and shared it with advertisers without a legal basis. This information was reported by Seoul’s data protection agency.

The Personal Information Protection Commission said in a statement released on Tuesday, November 5, that the technology giant had collected information from about 980,000 South Korean Facebook users. This data is related to issues such as political views, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation. The company did not obtain consent from users to collect the mentioned information. This data was then used by about 4,000 advertisers.

Meta Korea did not respond to a request for comment on the fine.

The Personal Information Protection Commission said the technology giant had analyzed user behavior data. In this case, the company looked at the web pages that users liked and the advertisements they clicked on Facebook. The technology giant also created and managed advertising themes related to sensitive information. Based on the relevant data, it carried out what can be described as fragmentation of users by categories. For example, there was a category of North Korean defectors, following a certain religion, or identifying as a transgender or gay person.

Seoul’s data protection agency also said that the technology giant had unfairly declined a request by users to access personal information and failed to prevent data on about 10 South Koreans from being leaked by hackers.

As we have reported earlier, Nigerian Regulator Fines Meta.