Norway set to fine Meta nearly $100,000 a day from August 14. Know why

Norway will impose a $98,500 (1 million crowns) a day fine on Meta over privacy breaches, starting August 14, the country's data protection authority said on Monday.

Datatilsynet, the Norwegian regulator had issued a warning about the fine last month if Facebook-owned Meta did not address privacy breaches identified by the body.

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“As of next Monday, a daily fine of 1 million crown will start to apply,” Tobias Judin, head of Datatilsynet’s international section was quoted as saying by Reuters.

The Norwegian watchdog said Meta cannot harvest user data, including their physical location and employ it to send targeted advertising at them, a practice often used by most tech companies to generate revenue.

The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company had up until August 4 to address the issue and inform the regulator that it had handled the issue. However, Meta failed to take a call and the watchdog took action, with fines running till November 3.

“According to Meta, this will take several months, at the very earliest, for them to implement...And we don’t know what the consent mechanism will look like. And in the (meantime), peoples’ rights are being violated, every single day," Judin added.

Watch | Meta fined $1.3 billion by European Union for sending user data to US: Report

Meta fined heavily by the EU

This is not the first instance when Meta has received a hefty fine amount. In May, the company was fined a record $1.3 billion (1.2 billion euros) by the European Union for failing to comply with a warning by the top EU court related to the data transfer of Facebook’s EU users to servers in the United States.

According to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which acts on behalf of the EU, the social media giant failed to pay heed to a top court warning aimed at protecting users’ data from the security services in the US once it’s shipped to servers across the Atlantic.

Facebook has repeatedly argued that following the Irish regulators' mandate could have “a far-reaching effect on businesses that rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs)and on the online services that many people and businesses rely on”.

Notably, Norwayis not a member of the EU but is part of the European single market, which explains the additional fine imposed on Meta.

(With inputs from agencies)

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