New Delhi: Meta (formerly Facebook) platforms were ordered by an Australian court to pay fines of nearly $14 million (AUS$20 million) for deceiving users about the use of their data.
In December 2020, Meta was sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for using Onavo.
The two Meta subsidiaries, Facebook Israel and Onavo, were each fined by the federal court to pay AUS$10 million for engaging in conduct liable to mislead in breach of the Australian Consumer Law.
The subsidiaries, which were the suppliers and developers of the Onavo Protect VPN app, were found to be responsible for misleading app descriptions that appeared in Apple App Store and Google listings.
“In Google and Apple App Store listings, Onavo Protect was promoted as a product that would keep users’ data protected and safe, for example, with language such as ‘Use a free, fast and secure VPN to protect personal information’ and ‘Helps Keep You and Your Data Safe’,” the commission said.
“In fact, Onavo and Facebook Israel shared the personal activity data from users collected by the app in anonymised and aggregated form with parent company Meta (then known as Facebook Inc) for commercial benefit,” it added.
Australian users installed the “Onavo Protect” VPN app over 270,000 times between February 2016 and October 2017; the watchdog discovered the same.
Facebook discontinued the service in May 2019.
“We took this case knowing that many consumers are concerned about how digital platforms capture, store and use their data. We believe Australian consumers should be able to make an informed choice about what happens to their data based on clear information that is not misleading,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb, said in a statement.
As joint submissions to the Court stated, Facebook Israel and Onavo agreed that the App Store listings conveyed that the Onavo Protect VPN would only use users’ data.
