Seoul, July 23 (IANS) South Korea’s privacy watchdog said on Thursday it has fined TikTok 10.3 billion won ($7 million) for unlawfully collecting and using users’ behavioural data from third-party services to personalize advertisements.
The Personal Information Protection Commission said it levied the fine on Singapore-based TikTok Pte. Ltd., which operates the social media giant’s services in South Korea, for violating the personal information law, reports Yonhap news agency.
The watchdog said TikTok collected behavioural data from 9.45 million users in South Korea through tools distributed to third-party websites and applications, and used them for personalised advertisements.
The commission said the company failed to properly notify users of such actions.
Separately, the watchdog ordered corrective measures against two Apple Inc. subsidiaries and fined them a combined 252 million won for personal information violations, such as collecting voice recordings and transcripts of users of the company’s Siri voice assistant without consent.
The commission said Apple collected voice recordings of Siri users and text transcripts of the recordings without their permission until August 2019.
While the company started asking for consent for voice recordings in October 2019, it did not do so for transcripts, according to the watchdog.
Last month, data protection regulator fined e-commerce company Coupang Corp. a record 624.7 billion won ($410 million) over privacy violations, including a massive data breach that affected more than 37 million users.
The Personal Information Protection Commission has decided to impose a record fine of 423.6 billion won for the data breach and levy an additional 201.1 billion-won fine for the unauthorized collection of records of online user activities and other violations.
It marked the largest fine ever imposed by the regulator on a single company, according to the commission.
“The investigation found that this incident happened not by sophisticated hacking, but due to Coupang’s inadequate safety management system,” Song Kyung-hee, the watchdog’s chief, said in a briefing.
Coupang expressed regret over the record fine imposed, adding that it plans to “clarify the facts through legal procedures.”
—IANS
na/