Australian court slaps AUD 20 million fine on Meta for undisclosed user data collection

Canberra: Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms, has been ordered by an Australian court to pay fines totaling A$20 million ($14 million) for collecting user data through its smartphone application, Onavo, which was advertised as a privacy protection tool without disclosing its data collection practices.

The Federal Court of Australia also mandated Meta, along with its subsidiaries Facebook Israel and the now-defunct Onavo app, to pay A$400,000 (approximately Rs. 2.2 crores) in legal costs to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which brought the civil lawsuit against the company, reported Reuters.

This fine addresses one aspect of Meta's legal troubles in Australia related to its handling of user information since the Cambridge Analytica scandal that erupted during the 2016 US election. The company is still facing a civil court action by Australia's Office of the Information Commissioner regarding its dealings with Cambridge Analytica in the country.

The recent judgement focuses on Onavo, a virtual private network (VPN) service that Facebook offered from early 2016 to late 2017. The app was marketed as a means to safeguard personal information by obscuring an internet user's identity through a different online address. However, it was revealed that Facebook used Onavo to collect users' location, time, and frequency of usage on other smartphone apps and websites for its own advertising purposes.

In her written judgement, Judge Wendy Abraham noted that the company's failure to provide adequate disclosures deprived thousands of Australian consumers of the opportunity to make informed choices about their data collection and usage when using Onavo Protect.

She also mentioned that the court had the authority to impose fines worth hundreds of billions of dollars, considering the app was downloaded 271,220 times, and each breach of consumer law carried a penalty of A$1.1 million (nearly Rs. 6.07 crore). However, the contraventions were considered a single course of conduct.

While the fine was mutually agreed upon by both parties, the judge emphasised that it should serve as a significant deterrent and not be viewed as a mere cost of doing business.

Meta, which reported global revenues of $116 billion (nearly Rs. 95,15,746 crore) last year, stated in a response that the judge had acknowledged the company's lack of intention to mislead customers and highlighted their efforts to provide more transparency and control over user data in recent years.