Google and Meta Lose Lawsuit to Cancel Fine for 'Collecting Personal Data Without Consent'; KCC Wins

Court Upholds 100 Billion Won Fines on Google and Meta
PIPC: "A Landmark Case Clarifying Platform Operators' Responsibility"
Ministry of Justice: "A Monumental Victory Protecting Citizens' Rights from Multinational Corporations"

The Seoul Administrative Court ruled against Google and Meta in their lawsuit seeking to cancel the 100 billion won-level fines imposed by the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC). As a result, the fines of 69.2 billion won for Google and 30.8 billion won for Meta were upheld in the first trial.

The PIPC announced this on the 23rd through a press release. Since February 2021, the PIPC has been investigating the personal information processing practices related to personalized advertising by the two companies. The investigation revealed that Google and Meta collected users' online activity information, such as website visit records and application (app) installation and usage history, without consent and used it for personalized advertising.

Particularly, issues were found in the consent procedures. Google hid the 'More Options' button and set consent as the default option, while Meta displayed 694 lines of related content but showed only 5 lines per screen, effectively obtaining user consent only formally.

In response, Google and Meta argued that the business operators running the websites or apps are the entities responsible for collecting personal information and obtaining user consent, and that they had already notified and obtained consent through their privacy policies. They filed the lawsuit in February last year.

On the other hand, the PIPC countered that since the companies tracked and collected website visit and app usage information of users registered on their services such as Google accounts, Facebook, and Instagram for personalized advertising, the companies themselves should have obtained direct consent. The PIPC also emphasized that similar sanctions have been imposed in other countries such as the European Union (EU) and the United States.

The PIPC stated, "This ruling is a meaningful case that clarifies the responsibility of large-scale platform operators for personal information protection," and added, "We will strengthen our supervisory role to ensure that citizens' rights to self-determination of personal information are fully guaranteed in the future AI data society."

The Ministry of Justice said, "This is a monumental case in which the two ministries joined forces to successfully protect the precious rights of our citizens from multinational corporations," and emphasized, "We will continue to provide multifaceted legal support in major international lawsuits against our government and do our best to protect the people and national interests."

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