Meta faces USD 100,000 daily fine for user-targeted advertising in Norway.

OSLO: Norway’s data protection agency banned Facebook and Instagram owner Meta from exploiting user data for targeted advertising on Monday, with a USD 100,000 daily fine.

US big IT giants have been fined heavily in Europe for privacy violations.

Datatilsynet, the Norwegian watchdog, said Meta utilises user location, likes, and posts for marketing.

“The Norwegian Data Protection Authority considers that the practise of Meta is illegal and is therefore imposing a temporary ban on behavioural advertising on Facebook and Instagram,” it added.

Meta will have three months to fix things after the August 4 ban. If it fails, the corporation will be penalised one million kroner (USD 100,000) per day.

Meta spokesman Matthew Pollard told NRK that the business will study the demands and that the announcement will not immediately affect its operations.

The Norwegian authority said its verdict did not restrict Facebook or Instagram or behavioural advertising.

Noyb, an Austrian digital privacy group that has filed several complaints against Meta, said it “welcomes this decision as a first important step” and expects other data regulators would follow suit.

This year, European regulators invalidated Meta’s legal justification for collecting users’ personal data for targeted advertising.

Meta suffered another big blow earlier this month when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected their workarounds and empowered antitrust regulators to consider data privacy risks.