[Alpha Biz=(Chicago) Reporter Kim Jisun] Samsung Electronics will be fined some 875 million won for failing to protect its personal information properly. LG HelloVision, which operates Hello Mobile, was also fined some 1.13 billion won for neglecting privacy measures. Samsung Electronics leaked tens of thousands of personal information compared to previously sanctioned companies, but its fines jumped sharply due to its large sales.

The Personal Information Protection Committee held its 11th plenary session on the 28th and decided to impose fines and fines on Samsung Electronics, LG HelloVision and Jarvis & Billons, the operators of Sam Zeamsam apps, which violated privacy laws.

The Personal Information Committee imposed a fine of 875.58 million won and a fine of 14 million won on Samsung Electronics for failing to fulfill its safety measures obligations under the Personal Information Protection Act. In addition, the government will order corrective measures such as establishing measures to prevent recurrence at the enterprise level related to personal information protection.

The Personal Information Committee launched an investigation from January 2020 to May 2021 after a total of six leaks were reported regarding Samsung Electronics. Of these, four cases were deliberated and decided, except for two cases that are difficult to be seen as personal information violations.

Samsung Electronics changed the database (DB) product of the Samsung account system and moved the data to the whole without considering the difference in the blank character processing method of each product. Because of this, a system error occurred, causing 260 personal information to be entered incorrectly, and 26 people to view incorrectly entered personal information.

There were also two cyber attacks aimed at Samsung Cloud services in February ∼ May 2020, and images and videos were leaked from 76 accounts.

In addition, in the Samsung.com online store system, personal information was leaked (62 errors and 19 views) as users inquired about other people's delivery information due to development errors.

Samsung Electronics' fines were higher than the amount of personal information leakage. This is because the Personal Information Protection Act sets a ceiling of up to 3% of violations and related sales. Earlier, McDonald's Korea was fined 696.46 million won for allowing the personal information of 4,876,106 users to be leaked through hacking. At Interpark, 784,920 cases of personal information were leaked, resulting in a fine of 1.02645 billion won, and at Paxnet, 284,054 cases of personal information were siphoned off, resulting in a fine of 34.84 million won.

 

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