SEOUL: A South Korean agency for protecting personal information on Wednesday fined Facebook $6.06 million and sought a criminal investigation for providing users鈥� personal information to other operators without consent.
The country鈥檚 Personal Information Protection Commission, launched in August this year, said in a statement it fined Facebook after a probe found that the personal information of least 3.3 million of the 18 million Facebook users in Korea were provided to operators other than Facebook without their knowledge, from May 2012 to June 2018.
When someone uses another operator鈥檚 service through Facebook鈥檚 log-in, the personal information of the user鈥檚 Facebook friends was provided to other operators without their consent, the commission said.
The commission said it will refer Facebook Ireland Ltd, the recipient of the fine, to the country鈥檚 prosecution for a criminal investigation.
鈥淲e have cooperating as much as possible throughout the investigation process, we regret that the Personal Information Protection Commission has sought a criminal investigation,鈥� a Seoul-based Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, declining further comment as Facebook hasn鈥檛 yet fully reviewed the details of the decision.