South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission said in a statement on Tuesday that Meta Platforms (META.O) has been ordered to pay a fine of 21.62 billion won (about 15.67 million U.S. dollars) for collecting sensitive user data without legal basis and providing it to advertisers. Meta collected information on religion, political views and sexual orientation of about 980,000 Korean Facebook users without obtaining their consent. The information was then used by about 4,000 advertisers. The commission said: "We found that Meta analyzed users' behavioral data, such as the pages they liked and the ads they clicked on Facebook, and created and managed advertising themes related to sensitive information." (Jin Shi)