Nov 29: Meta fined $277M yet again in Ireland for data breaches, concerns in Korea that major global companies' privacy officers are in-name only

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 Nov 29: Meta fined $277M yet again in Ireland for data breaches, concerns in Korea that major global companies' privacy officers are in-name only

        Irish regulators fined Meta another $277 million for breaching the GDPR. This fine was the result of an investigation into reports that over 533 million user data was found online in a hacker's forum, with the data including names, phone numbers, locations, birthdates, and email addresses. The data breach occurred through 'data scraping'. This latest fine on Meta comes after a 405 million euro fine on Instagram in September for mishandling teenagers' personal information, a 17 million euro fine in September for mishandling data breach notifications, and a 225 million euro fine for WhatsApp for violating rules on sharing user data with other Meta companies. 

        There are concerns in Korea that major international companies operating in Korea, such as Meta, Google, and Nike, are appointing Privacy Protection Officers that are 'in name only'. This is due to Korea's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) requiring major foreign companies that earn over $754 million revenue to appoint a representative within the nation to take responsibility for privacy rights compliance. Although appointing representatives that only fill the requirement while not actually upholding their duties (of privacy protection) to the fullest extent is not illegal, there are concerns that such faulty or negligent appointments is causing privacy breaches. The most drastic examples of this are recent major fines against Google and Meta by Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission for collecting information without consent and using them on targeted advertising.