OSLO (Reuters) – The Facebook and Instagram owners of the Meta platforms will be fined one million kroner ($100,000) a day for privacy violations unless they take corrective action, Norway’s data protection authority said on Monday.
Regulator Datatilcinet said it would charge the penalty every day from August 4 to November 3 unless Meta took action.
Meta said in Norway that it cannot collect user data such as users’ physical locations and use it to target advertising to them, called behavioral advertising, a common business model at Big Tech.
“This is illegal, so we need to intervene now and immediately. We can’t wait any longer,” Tobias Judin, head of Datatilcinet’s global division, told Reuters.
Meta said it will review Datatilsynet’s decision and that there will be no immediate impact on its services.
Datatilcinet has referred the move to the European Data Protection Board, which, if agreed, could make the fine permanent and expand the jurisdictional scope of the ruling in Europe.
“It puts more pressure on the meta,” Judin said.
Datatilcinet’s decision comes days after the European Union’s top court ruled that Meta cannot collect user data for behavioral advertising.
In December, Meta’s European-headquartered data regulator in Ireland (DPC) said the company should have stopped the practice.
“We will continue to engage constructively with the Irish DPC, our lead regulator in the EU,” said Meta.
“The debate around the legal bases has continued for some time and businesses are experiencing a lack of regulatory certainty in this area.”
Norway is not a member of the EU but is part of the European Single Market.
The news was first reported by Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
($1 = 10.0190 Norwegian kroner)
(Reporting by Gladys Fosshe, Editing by Anna Ringstrom and Jason Neely)