Coupang Fined Record $410 Million In South Korea Over Data Breach & Privacy Violations Affecting 37.5 Million Users

Seoul: South Korea's data protection regulator on Thursday fined e-commerce company Coupang a record 624.7 billion won ($410 million) over privacy violations, including a massive data breach that affected more than 37 million users.

Record fine for data breach and violations
The Personal Information Protection Commission has decided to impose a record fine of 423.6 billion won for the data breach and levy an additional 201.1 billion won in fine for the unauthorised collection of records of online user activities and other violations.

It marked the regulator's highest fine ever against a company for a single data breach and multiple violations, reports Yonhap news agency.

Watchdog cites lack of protection systems
"Coupang is a company that grew dramatically by offering an innovative e-commerce service based on large-scale customer information," Song Kyung-hee, the watchdog's chief, said in a briefing. "But our investigation confirmed that it did not have a system to protect and manage personal information commensurate to that."

Scope of the breach revealed
The punitive measures came more than six months after Coupang reported a large-scale data breach last November of personal information of users in South Korea, including their names, phone numbers and delivery details.

The regulator concluded that about 37.5 million users had been affected in the breach -- about 33.2 million members and 4.3 million users who were not members.

The penalty for the breach more than tripled the regulator's previous record fine of 134.8 billion won against wireless carrier SK Telecom Co. last August over a major data leak.

Unauthorised data collection and ad issues
The regulator also found that Coupang collected records of online activities of 11.17 million users, who accessed other services, without their permission. The records included websites and applications visited by the users.

It additionally determined that the company did not properly manage advertisement partners that posted "hi-jacking" advertisements.

Logistics arm also fined
Separately, the watchdog also fined the company's logistics arm, Coupang Fulfillment Services, 248 million won for various privacy violations, such as collecting a list of journalists and keeping them on an employment restriction list.

(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)