Norwegian court upholds fine against Meta for private data abuse
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According to the country's national Data Protection Authority (DPA), Datatilsynet, Meta collects information on users' whereabouts, preferred content, and posts for marketing purposes.
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The Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference on March 22, 2023, in San Francisco, California. (AP)
On Wednesday, the Oslo district court upheld a punishment issued on Meta in July for utilizing personal information from Norwegian social network users for behavioral advertising.
Data protection authorities in Norway announced in July that they would forbid Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, from collecting user data for targeted advertising and threatened to fine the company $100,000 per day if it did so.
Due to privacy concerns, prominent US internet companies are under close review throughout Europe, and in recent years, significant fines have been imposed.
Norwegian authorities detailed that the decision does not prohibit Facebook and Instagram from operating in the nation, nor is it a blanket ban on behavioral advertising.
According to the country's national Data Protection Authority (DPA), Datatilsynet, Meta collects information on users' whereabouts, preferred content, and posts for marketing purposes.
The Norwegian data protection regulator (Datatilsynet) has sentenced the US tech giant to pay $93,000 each day beginning August 14 for misusing private data obtained on Facebook and Instagram, while Meta filed a lawsuit to postpone payments.
Datatilsynet Director Line Coll stated on social media that this symbolizes a "big victory for privacy."
European regulators reject Meta justification
Meta has come under criticism in Europe for what it calls "behavioral advertising," which it claims lacks regulatory clarity. The firm claims that its technique of obtaining users' agreement for data processing is compliant with local data protection requirements, but it has committed to improving it.
Facebook's parent company suffered a significant blow early this year when European regulators rejected the legal justification Meta had offered for collecting users' personal information for use in targeted advertising.
In May, Meta was hit with a record fine by the EU for violating the "fundamental rights" of European users and transferring their data to the United States, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said on Monday.
This is not the first time that the company has been penalized by the European Union for exploiting personal data. In the last six months, Meta - headquartered in Dublin - was fined four times over data violations by Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp.
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