Two subsidiaries of Meta, Facebook's parent company, are each being fined A$10 million (€6 million) for "misleading consumers", the consumer protection body Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced on Wednesday.
A federal court has ordered two Meta subsidiaries, Facebook Israel and Onavo, to each pay A$10 million to the state for breaching Australia's consumer protection law.
Onavo Protect, based in Israel, is a mobile application available via the Google Playstore and Apple store and billed as a VPN service ensuring user security. "In reality, Onavo and Facebook Israel shared data from user activity, collected by the application in anonymised and aggregated form with the company Meta for commercial purposes," the ACCC points out.
According to the Australian regulator, the app was installed more than 270,000 times by Australian users between February 2016 and October 2017.
A Meta spokesperson responded to the ruling by stressing that Onavo Protect had functioned properly as a security tool.
"Protecting the privacy and security of user data is fundamental to how Meta operates. Over the past few years, we have developed tools that give users more transparency and control over how their data is used, and we design every new product with this in mind," Meta insisted.
