Meta's Facebook, Onavo fined A$20M by Australian court over undisclosed user data collection
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Australia's Federal Court has ordered two subsidiaries of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), Facebook Israel and Onavo, to each pay A$10M (total $A20M ($14M)) for allegedly engaging in conduct liable to mislead consumers about use of their data.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said on Wednesday that the court declared that the two companies engaged in conduct liable to mislead the public in promotions for the Onavo Protect app, by failing to properly disclose that users' data would be used for purposes other than providing Onavo Protect â a virtual private network (VPN) â including Meta's commercial purposes.
The ACCC added that Onavo and Facebook Israel shared the personal activity data from users collected by the app in anonymized and aggregated form with parent company Meta (then known as Facebook) for commercial benefit.
The information shared with Meta included data about users' internet and app activity, such as records of every app they accessed and time they spent using those apps, the ACCC noted.
The ACCC said that in submissions to the court, Facebook Israel and Onavo agreed that the App Store listings conveyed that Onavo Protect usersâ data will only be used to provide the Onavo Protect VPN. The listings did not disclose that data collected by Onavo Protect about its Australian usersâ online activities was also used for other purposes, including as a 'business intelligence tool.'
"In the case of the Onavo Protect app, we were concerned that consumers seeking to protect their privacy through a virtual private network were not clearly told that in downloading and using this app they were actually facilitating the use of their data for Metaâs commercial benefit," said ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
Facebook utilized Onavo to collect users' location, time and frequency of using other smartphone applications, and sites the people visited for its own advertising purposes, Judge Wendy Abraham said in a written judgment, according to a report from Reuters.
The Australian court also ordered the company to pay A$400K in legal costs to ACCC, the report added.
The penalty brings to an end one of the legal issues Meta faces in Australia linked to its handling of user data since a global scandal came to light over its use of data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 U.S. election,
The company still faces a civil court action by Australia's Office of the Information Commissioner related to its dealings with Cambridge Analytica in Australia, the report noted.
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