Australian ACCC fines Meta for misleading users with Onavo Protect VPN

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The Meta subsidiaries Facebook Israel and Onavo have been fined the equivalent of 12.2 million euros by the Australian consumer watchdog ACCC. The Onavo Protect VPN service is said to deceive users and collect user data.

The two companies, which each received a fine of 6.1 million euros, used data from users of the VPN service to display targeted advertisements. Facebook Israel and Onavo had this according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission not made transparent to users. With the VPN service, the companies would give the impression that the privacy of users was guaranteed. The incident occurred between February 2016 and October 2017; the app was downloaded 270,000 times by Australian users and has been unavailable for several years.

In a statement to TechCrunch Meta says the ACCC has acknowledged that the VPN application in the App Store and Play Store was not deliberately presented in a misleading manner. The use of user data would be mentioned in the general terms and conditions and in the privacy policy.

The two companies have agreed to pay the fine, according to the ACCC. Facebook Israel and Onavo must also contribute to the costs incurred by the ACCC in the legal proceedings required to enforce the fine.

Onavo has been in controversy since 2017 due to alleged infringement of user privacy. In 2018, the Protect VPN was removed from the App Store because the then Facebook could use it to see which apps users had on their smartphones. Later, code from the VPN was found in the Facebook Research app, which again collected user data, in this case against payment from Facebook.

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