Instagram Faces 550 Billion Won Fine in Europe... Big Tech Under Successive Investigations

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] Irish regulators have imposed a fine of approximately 550 billion KRW on Instagram for violating privacy regulations.

According to the UK Guardian and others, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced on the 5th (local time) that it has decided to impose a fine of 405 million euros (about 550 billion KRW) on Meta, Instagram's parent company. The fine amounts to about 1% of Meta's net profit last year.

The regulators took issue with the exposure of personal information such as phone numbers and email addresses of children aged 13 to 17 using business accounts on Instagram. The DPC has been investigating since 2020, stating that such forced disclosure fails to properly protect minors' personal information.

When a personal account on Instagram is switched to a business account, users can check statistics on how popular their photos or videos are. Many teenage users switched their accounts to business accounts, during which personal information was disclosed without user consent.

Meta stated that it plans to appeal the ruling, disagreeing with the calculation of the fine. A Meta spokesperson explained, "We do not agree with the method of calculating the fine," adding, "Instagram introduced safety measures to protect teenagers when it changed settings a year ago."

Currently, the DPC and several other European regulators are conducting investigations into big tech companies' violations of privacy regulations, with 37 cases awaiting the announcement of investigation results.

Previously, the DPC imposed a fine of 225 million euros on Meta's messenger WhatsApp last year for violating EU privacy regulations.

At that time, the issue was that there was insufficient explanation about how personal information was shared with Facebook.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.