Australian Court Orders Meta Subsidiaries to Pay $14 Million
upstart writes:
Adverts said Onavo Protect user data would be kept a secret - just didn't say from whom:
On Wednesday, Australia's Federal Court ordered two Meta subsidiaries to pay $14 million after an over two and a half year legal battle instigated by the country's competition regulator found the pair misled users on the data collection of a now defunct VPN app.
[...] Israel-based web analytics company Onavo, maker of free downloadable software application Onavo Protect, was acquired by Facebook in 2013. The narrative from Onavo at the time was that privacy was king. Meanwhile Facebook promised the company would be a separate brand.
But by 2018, researchers were onto the tall tale and found Onavo Protect sent user data to Facebook even when turned off - a situation that was outlined and permitted through its terms and conditions.
According to the ACCC [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission], information collected and aggregated included "users' internet and app activity, such as records of every app they accessed and the number of seconds each day they spent using those apps" for Facebook's commercial benefit.
[...] On Wednesday, the Australian court said that Onavo Inc. and Facebook Israel promoted the VPN during 2016 and 2017 without sufficiently disclosing that data would be used outside of the app.
"If an Australian user of Onavo Protect had a Facebook account, Meta was also able to combine that user's Onavo Protect Data with information that Meta maintained about the user's Facebook account, using an algorithm," wrote Judge Wendy Abraham.
She further noted that internal Meta documents referred to Onavo Protect as a "business intelligence tool," providing "a sample of users who we are able to know nearly everything they are doing on their mobile device." The data was then used for advertising, marketing and improvement of products, services and strategies.
According to the Australian court, the terms and conditions disclosing data use were not sufficient enough to counter advertisements to the contrary. Court documents state that both Facebook Israel and Onavo admit that ads and statements were likely to mislead or deceive.
[...] Abraham said in court documents the fine "carries with it a sufficient sting to ensure that the penalty amount is not such as to be regarded by the parties or others as simply an acceptable cost of doing business."
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