Meta Platforms, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, will be fined by Norway’s data protection regulator over privacy violations, the authority announced on Monday.
Meta will be slapped with a fine amounting to $100,000 a day from August 4 until November 3 unless the company takes remedial measures to address privacy breaches on its social media platforms.
“It is so clear that this is illegal that we need to intervene now and immediately,” reads a comment from the regulator. “We cannot wait any longer.”
Meta cannot harvest personal user data and use it for behavioural or targeted advertising, the regulator said. The data primarily includes users’ physical location.
In response to the action, Meta said it will review the watchdog’s decision. The company’s services will remain intact in the region, however.
Meta also faces the threat of the fine turning permanent as the regulator has forwarded its action to the European Data Protection Board. In case the board agrees, the applicability of the fine could be expanded, increasing its territorial reach and further complicating the targeted advertising affair for Meta.
Meta has already been facing strict regulatory scrutiny for behavioural advertising in the European Union (EU) after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in favour of Germany’s leading antitrust watchdog earlier this month. In 2019, the regulator had ordered Meta to stop collecting user data for behavioural advertising without obtaining informed consent.
The court supported the watchdog to investigate potential data breaches committed by Meta, which had been challenged by the corporation. As a result of the ruling, antitrust authorities were given more power to investigate Big Tech’s abusive practices with regards to data privacy and protection.
Meta has been struck with a number of fines over the years for mishandling user data. The recent biggest fine on the conglomerate was imposed in May, when Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta a record $1.3 billion for violating EU’s data privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Last year, the Facebook-parent was ordered to pay $275 million for violating the same regulations. The hefty penalty arrived in conclusion to the investigation that had been launched into Meta’s failure to prevent massive data privacy breaches that took place in 2019.
