Meta Fined $20 Million for Undisclosed User Data Collection

A pedestrian walks in front of a Meta sign at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Oct. 28, 2021. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (formerly Facebook) and its subsidiary has been slapped with $20 million (US$13.54 million) in fines after an Australian court found it secretly harvested data from users.

Onavo Protect, which was acquired by Meta in 2013, is a free virtual private network service that promised to keep user data “safe online” and give customers “peace of mind” when browsing the internet.