{"id":82230,"date":"2023-07-26T18:12:05","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T15:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=82230"},"modified":"2025-09-12T03:46:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T00:46:35","slug":"australia-fines-meta-14-million-for-covert-collection-of-personal-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/australia-fines-meta-14-million-for-covert-collection-of-personal-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia fines Meta $14 million for covert collection of personal data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An Australian court ordered Meta Platforms to pay a fine of <span data-descr=\"Australian dollars\" class=\"old_tooltip\">AUD<\/span> (about $14 million) for covert collection of personal data through the Onavo app designed to protect privacy. Reuters reports.<\/p>\n<p>The company remains a defendant in a suit by the Australian Information Commissioner over its ties to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal\"> Cambridge Analytica<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling concerns the VPN service that the company offered from early 2016 through late 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook (<a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/facebook-rebrands-as-meta-nfts-to-feature-in-zuckerbergs-metaverse\">the former name of Meta<\/a>) used Onavo to collect information about users\u2019 location, time and frequency of use of other <span data-descr=\"apps\" class=\"old_tooltip\">apps<\/span> for advertising purposes.<\/p>\n<p>According to the document, the fine could have been in the hundreds of billions, as Australians downloaded the app 271,220 times, and each breach of consumer protection law carried a fine of AUD 1.1 million.<\/p>\n<p>In April 2022, former Meta employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/former-meta-employee-warns-of-privacy-risks-in-the-metaverse\">warned<\/a> about the possibility of the company\u2019s abuses being carried over into the developing metaverse.<\/p>\n<p>Amnesty International<a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/facebook-algorithms-accused-of-aiding-rohingya-genocide-in-myanmar\">accused<\/a> Facebook of &#8220;aiding&#8221; the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Australian court ordered Meta Platforms to pay a fine of AUD 20 million (about $14 million) for covert collection of personal data through the Onavo app designed to protect privacy. Reuters reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[108,1162,1293,1256],"class_list":["post-82230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-australia","tag-court-cases","tag-meta","tag-privacy-and-personal-data"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"14","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82232,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82230\/revisions\/82232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}