The EU condemns Facebook’s parent company for misusing its processing of personal data for advertising purposes, and for imposing advertising trackers.
The Meta group, the parent company of Facebook, was fined on Wednesday January 4 two fines totaling 390 million euros for violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Meta would have violated “its transparency obligations” by relying on an erroneous legal basis “for its processing of personal data for advertising purposes”, said the regulator.
210 million euros for Facebook, 180 for Instagram
In detail, the fine amounts to 210 million euros for Facebook. Instagram endorses the remaining 180 million euros. The WhatsApp fine is expected to be announced next week.
Privacy group Noyb, which initiated the case, had accused Meta of reinterpreting the consent set out in the GDPR so that users of the services cannot opt out of targeted advertising.
Noyb welcomed the move, which will force Meta to implement “a yes/no consent option” for the use of its users’ personal data.
The company has three months to bring its data processing operations into compliance.
Meta has already been fined 405 million euros in September for shortcomings in the processing of minors’ data and in November fined 265 million euros for not having sufficiently protected the data of its users. .
Apple sentenced for imposing ad trackers
In addition, in France, the CNIL imposed a fine of 8 million euros on Apple for having imposed advertising tracers on its users, without their explicit consent.
The investigation was launched after a complaint from the France Digital association, which brings together French start-ups.