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Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay $20 million in fines over a breach of Australian consumer law regarding its Onavo Protect VPN app.
The fine will be split evenly between Facebook Israel and the now defunct Onavo Protect subsidiary, with the company also agreeing to pay $400,000 to cover the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) legal fees, The Guardian reports.
The ACCC took Meta to court in December 2020 over the app’s collection of “an extensive variety of data”. The two have now agreed that even though the data collection was noted in the terms of service, it was not nearly prominent enough in the period between 2016 and 2017.
The data found to have been collected illegally concerned mobile device usage, as well as what other apps users were accessing. The data was then stripped of identifying details before being repackaged for commercial use.
“Through Onavo Protect, Facebook was collecting, aggregating, and using the very detailed and valuable personal activity data of thousands of Australian consumers for its own commercial purposes, which we believe is completely contrary to the promise of protection, secrecy, and privacy that was central to Facebook’s promotion of this app,” said Rod Sims, the ACCC’s chair, when the case was first brought to court.
“We believe that the conduct deprived Australian consumers of the opportunity to make an informed choice about the collection and use of their personal activity data by Facebook and Onavo,” Sims said.
A Meta spokesperson told Cyber Security Connect that while the terms of service were not deliberately misleading, they could have been more clearly stated.
They also pointed out that the ACCC’s allegations were not related to Onavo Protect’s use as an online security tool.
“Protecting the privacy and security of people’s data is fundamental to how Meta’s business works," Meta’s spokesperson said.
“Over the last several years, we have built tools to give people more transparency and control over how their data is used, and we design every new product and feature with privacy in mind.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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