South Korea Fines Google For Illegal Data Gathering

It seems like South Korea is coming down hard on personal privacy violations. Just last week I wrote an article about new legislation South Korea is implementing banning bloatware on mobile phones - now they are fining Google $196,000 for illegally collecting private data - and more importantly demanding that Google turn over all of the illegally collected private data.

Via Ryan Huang -

"Google has been fined 210 million won (US$196,000) by South Korean regulators for collecting personal data when it was setting up its Street View service...The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) also ordered the Internet giant to delete all personal information it had gathered without consent and post a progress update on its site...[Google] not only collected 360 degree views of the streets but also picked up plenty of personal data along the way such as Internet IDs, passwords, network addresses, text messages, and credit card numbers, according to KCC."

It's nice to see a crack down on companies collecting people's private data, but this is nothing new.

"Google has already been fined in Europe and the United States for similar infringements. Last year, it was fined €145,000 (US$189,000) in Germany, €100,000 (US$136,000) in France while it settled in the U.S. for US$7 million."

Considering Google earned $50 billion in revenue in 2012 alone these relatively tiny fines do almost nothing to stop the company from collecting whatever information they please. A better question might be: Why does Google want all of this information in the first place? Moreover, is it ethical that they collect it?