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

On 16 December 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) initiated a lawsuit against Meta (formerly known as Facebook) for the alleged failure to disclose the collection of user data in their app Onavo. The lawsuit was filed at the Australian Federal Court. According to the ACCC, between February 2016 and October 2017, Facebook and its subsidiaries, Facebook Israel Ltd and Onavo, Inc., allegedly misled Australian consumers by claiming that the Onavo Protect app would maintain the privacy, protection, and confidentiality of users' personal activity data. They also represented that the data would only be used for the purpose of providing Onavo Protect's products. However, the ACCC asserts that Onavo collected, aggregated, and utilised substantial amounts of users' personal activity data for the commercial benefit of Facebook, which was not adequately disclosed to the users.