Australia, a court fined Meta-owned legal entities $13.5 million
The Federal Court of Australia has fined two companies owned by the US corporation Meta 20 million Australian dollars ($13.5 million) for violation of consumer protection legislation and secret collection of users' personal data, Azernews reports.
The reason for the fine was a lawsuit filed by the ACCC, which had previously accused Facebook Israel and Onavo of illegally collecting personal data, through Facebook's Onavo Protect app. "From February 2016 to October 2017, Facebook misled Australian customers by telling them that the Onavo app would keep users' personal data private and secure, but instead the social network used it for its market research projects," the regulator's lawsuit said.
Facebook Israel and Onavo, which owned the app, admitted the charges and agreed to pay the fine, splitting it in half.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleged that the companies had made false and deceptive statements about their 50 or 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) fiber-to-the-node plans for at least 12 months in 2019 and possibly into 2020. The ACCC estimated that the false claims affected around 120,000 subscribers.
In response to the court's ruling, Telstra admitted that from April 2019 to April 2020, it had failed to properly check the highest achievable speed of the NBN services of nearly 48,000 customers. The company said that it had gone through an extensive remediation and refund process and had taken steps to better meet its regulatory obligations.
TPG Telecom and Optus also responded to the court's ruling, saying that they had modified their systems and procedures and would contact customers who qualify for remediation.
Facebook's Onavo Protect app, which was discontinued in 2019, provided VPN users with protection for their connection to the network and guaranteed anonymity within it. Once registered, users were led to believe that their personal data was only stored in the app's databases, with no transfer or possibility of further use.
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