Facebook In Breach Of South Korean Privacy Laws
By David Jani 08 December 2010
A South Korean regulator has attacked Facebook, claiming that the social network is breaching data privacy laws.
The Korean Communications Commission has criticised Facebook's general privacy policy, the company's handling of personal information, the handing over of personal data to third party organisations and a lack of proper consent for its use of personal user data.
Choi Seong Jin, a spokesperson for the KCC claimed: "Facebook violates the regulations on protection of privacy in information networks".
The social network is said to be in contravention of Article 22 of the South Korean Act on Promotion of Information and Communication Network Utilization and Information Protection, which states: "If an information and communications service provider intends to gather user personal information, they shall obtain user consent."
The KCC maintains that Facebook isn't properly gaining consent from users to use their personal data and has given Facebook 30 days to respond to the complaint.
According to ComputerWorld, there are 2.3 million Facebook users in South Korea, which makes up roughly five per cent of the nations population. Nine out of ten social network users in the country are in their 20s.
Facebook has also been criticised in the west for poor data security, with a BT Technology Officer recently claiming that the social network was scaling down its privacy provisions to exploit user data for profit.