A South Korean agency responsible for protecting personal information on Wednesday fined Facebook Inc $ 6.06 million and demanded that a criminal investigation be conducted for providing users' personal information to other operators without consent.
The country's Personal Information Protection Commission, launched in August this year, revealed that the action was taken after an investigation found that at least 3.3 million out of 18 million Facebook users in Korea were given personal information to operators other than Facebook without their knowledge, from May 2012 to June 2018.
In addition, the commission also referred to Facebook Ireland Ltd as the recipient of the fine, and handed over the issue to the country's prosecution to conduct a criminal investigation.
According to a Facebook spokesperson in Seoul, they have cooperated well throughout the investigation process, deeply regretting the actions of the Personal Information Protection Commission which has called for a criminal investigation to be carried out. However, the details of the case were not disclosed further.
