South Korean users team up to sue Facebook over leaked user data

Commission on protecting personal data says Facebook violated the country's laws by providing information of at least 3.3 million million users to third parties.

A group of Facebook users in South Korea is pushing to sue the tech giant for passing users' information to other companies without their consent, judicial sources said.

According to the sources, the local law firm Jihyang and the Jinbo Network Center, a civic group advocating for people's information rights, are gathering plaintiffs willing to participate in a mass legal action by the end of May.

In November last year, the country's Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Facebook violated the country's law by providing personal information of at least 3.3 million of the total 18 million users here to third parties from May 2012 to June 2018.

The leaked data included educational backgrounds, careers, places of birth and relationship statuses, as well as information on friends, according to the PIPC, reports Yonhap news agency.

The watchdog fined the company $6 million and filed a criminal complaint against it on data breach charges. It also found the social media giant submitted fabricated documents during the investigation.

"The right to self-determine the usage of personal information should be strictly protected under the law as part of basic human rights," Jihyang said, calling the continuous "law-breaking activities" by IT giants, including Facebook, "a very serious problem."

In a separate case, over 500 million Facebook users worldwide have recently suffered a data breach, sparking concerns over the company's data security.

The personal data of nearly 533 million (53.3 crore) Facebook users, including 61 lakh Indians, were leaked online after a hacker posted the details on a digital forum.

The leaked data included Facebook ID numbers, profile names, email addresses, location information, gender details, job data, and other details.

Facebook said the data was old.

"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," a Facebook spokesperson had said in a statement.