Meta added another privacy penalty to its long list of them: South Korea's data protection agency fined the social media giant around $15.7 million for processing sensitive user data and passing it to advertisers without a proper legal basis, according to a report from Reuters.

South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission said Facebook's parent company collected information on sensitive topics such as politics, sexuality, and religion from almost 980,000 users. Without their permission, it was shared with some 4,000 advertisers in breach of local data protection rules.

Meta got the sensitive behavioral data by analyzing the pages that users had liked and the ads they clicked, among other tracking and profiling methods. PIPC said examples of sensitive info the company compiled included users being categorized as North Korean defectors, following a certain religion, or identifying as transgender or gay.

It also wrongfully denied a user data access request and failed to stop hackers from accessing data related to a few hundred users.

Meta spokesman Matthew Pollard said: "We will review the full written decision once it is shared with us. We remain committed to engaging with the PIPC to protect the privacy of South Korean users."