Australia: Issued ruling in the ACCC lawsuit against Meta over alleged failure to disclose collection of user data in their app Onavo

On 26 July 2023, the Federal Court of Australia issued a ruling in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) lawsuit against Meta regarding the alleged failure to disclose the collection of user data in their app, Onavo. The court has ordered Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, to pay fines totalling AUD 20 million for gathering user data through the smartphone application Onavo, which was advertised as a privacy protection tool without revealing its actual data collection activities. Additionally, Meta has been instructed to pay AUD 400'000 in legal costs to the ACCC. According to the ACCC, the application Onavo was marketed by Facebook as a virtual private network (VPN) service, claiming to safeguard users' personal information. VPNs work by concealing a user's online identity with a different online address. However, it was alleged that Facebook used Onavo to collect users' location, activity time, and frequency while using other smartphone applications and browsing websites for its own advertising purposes. The court found the lack of sufficient disclosures misleading to consumers, depriving them of the ability to make informed choices about the collection and usage of their data before downloading and using Onavo.