In addition to the $25.4 million antitrust fine, the CCI has ordered Meta to cease this element of cross-app user data sharing for five years. The order wraps up a probe that began in March 2021.
For every day that Meta remains out of compliance during the 90-day period, it will be assessed the equivalent of $100,000. The fine period would run until the end of October, and should Meta be out of compliance for the full duration it would end up paying a total of $9 million.
Meta is facing a total of $20 million in fines in Australia due to misleading consumers about personal data usage. Facebook Israel and VPN service Onavo Protect promised to keep user data private and safe, but were sharing collected personal information with Meta for use in its targeted advertising systems.
Malicious apps appear to be flying below the radar of Google and Apple security by not taking an approach of installing malware or keyloggers; instead they simply ask for Facebook login information as a condition of starting up the app.
Though this particular case only applies to its plaintiff, human rights advocate Tanya O’Carroll, the ICO-backed decision will likely have to inform the company's broader UK targeted advertising policy as others could launch similar suits.
A 2019 incident in which user passwords were inadvertently stored in plaintext has netted a €91 million GDPR fine for Meta from Ireland's DPC, though access to the password storage was limited to Meta workers on an internal company network.
Meta has now lost that case in the EU's highest court, opening the door for other antitrust law investigations in the bloc to incorporate data privacy violations and frame them as part of a systemic abuse of market position.
A new record for GDPR fines has been set as the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is requiring Meta to pay $1.3 billion for its international data transfers related to the dissolution of the Privacy Shield framework.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 is still not quite out of the news yet, as investigations around the world continue to wrap up. Australia's Information Commissioner has agreed to a $50 million AUD privacy settlement over the violations.
The CEOs of the two companies cited the EU's "inconsistent" and "fragmented" AI regulations as the central reason for the delays in rollout of products to European customers and developers. Meta paused the release of new AI models in the EU in June.
