Australian Court Fines Meta Platforms Inc., IDR 210 Billion Million For Privacy Violations

JAKARTA - Wednesday, July 26, an Australian court sentenced Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. to pay a total fine of 20 million Australian doallers (Rp210 billion) for collecting user data through an advertised smartphone application as a way to protect privacy without revealing the measure.

Australia's Federal Court also ordered Meta, through its subsidiary Facebook Israel and its discontinued app, Onavo, to pay USD 400,000 (IDR 4 billion) as legal fees to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which filed a civil lawsuit.

The fine closes one side of Meta's legal issues in Australia regarding the handling of user information since the global scandal erupted about the use of the Cambridge data analytic firm Analytica in the 2016 US elections.

Meskipun begitu, Meta masih menghadapi tuntutan perdata dari Office of the Information Commissioner Australia terkait hubungannya dengan Cambridge Analytica di Australia.

Last Wednesday's decision was related to a virtual private network (VPN) service that the company at that time called Facebook offered from early 2016 to the end of 2017, namely Onavo, which was advertised as a way to maintain the security of personal information. VPN obscures internet user identities by providing their computers with different online addresses.

However, Facebook uses Onavo to collect user locations, times, and frequency through other smartphone applications, as well as websites they visit for their own advertising purposes, Judge Wendy Abraham said in a written ruling.

"Failures to provide adequate explanations... may have left tens of thousands of Australian consumers missing the opportunity to make decisions based on sufficient information on collecting and using their data before downloading and/or using Onavo Protect," Abraham wrote.

He added that the court could fine hundreds of billions of dollars as the app was downloaded by Australians 271,220 times, and any violation of the consumer law carries a fine of 1.1 million Australian dollars (Rp 11.1 billion), but "violations can be considered as a single act."

The fine was agreed upon by both parties, but "provides sufficient deterrent effect to ensure that the amount of the fine is not considered an acceptable cost in doing business," he wrote.

Meta, which earned $116 billion in global revenue last year, stated in a statement that ACCC has acknowledged they have never attempted to mislead customers, and "for the past few years, we have developed tools to provide people with more transparency and control over their data usage."

In a separate statement, ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said Australian consumers should be able to make decisions based on clear information about what is happening with brand data.