Australia's Federal Court also ordered Meta, through its subsidiaries
Facebook Israel and the now-discontinued app, Onavo, to pay A$400,000 in legal
costs to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which
brought the civil lawsuit.
The fine wraps up one strand of Meta's legal issues in
Australia related to its handling of user information since a global scandal
erupted over its use of data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 US
election.
Meta still faces a civil court action by Australia's Office
of the Information Commissioner over its dealings with Cambridge Analytica in
Australia.
Wednesday's judgment was in relation to a virtual private
network (VPN) service the company then called Facebook offered from early 2016
to late 2017, Onavo, which it advertised as a way to keep personal information
safe. VPNs obscure an internet user's identity by giving their computer a
different online address.
However, Facebook used Onavo to collect users' location,
time, and frequency using other smartphone apps, and websites they visited for
its own advertising purposes, Judge Wendy Abraham said in a written judgment.
"The failure to make sufficient disclosures ... may
have deprived tens of thousands of Australian consumers of the opportunity to
make an informed choice about the collection and use of their data before
downloading and/or using Onavo Protect," Abraham wrote.
She added that the court could have fined Meta hundreds of
billions of dollars since Australians downloaded the app 271,220 times and each
breach of consumer law carried a A$1.1 million (nearly Rs. 6.07 crore) fine,
but "the contraventions can be characterised as a single course of
conduct".
The fine was agreed by both sides but "carries with it
a sufficient sting to ensure that the penalty amount is not such as to be
regarded ... as simply an acceptable cost of doing business", she wrote.
Meta, which made global revenues of $116 billion last year,
said in a statement the judge had acknowledged it never sought to mislead
customers, and "over the last several years we have built tools to give
people more transparency and control over how their data is used".
The ACCC was not immediately available for comment. © Reuters