South Korea – South Korea’s privacy watchdog has fined TikTok 10.3 billion won (USD $7M) for unlawfully gathering and using users’ behavioural data from third-party services to personalise advertisements.
The Personal Information Protection Commission announced the penalty on Thursday, levying it against Singapore-based TikTok Pte. Ltd., which runs the platform’s operations in South Korea, for breaching the country’s personal information law, Yonhap News Agency reported.
According to the commission, TikTok collected behavioural data from 9.45 million users in South Korea via tools distributed to third-party websites and applications, then used that data to personalise adverts. The watchdog said the company failed to properly notify users that this was happening.
In a separate action announced the same day, the commission ordered corrective measures against two Apple Inc. subsidiaries and fined them a combined 252 million won for personal information violations. These included collecting voice recordings and transcripts from users of Apple’s Siri voice assistant without consent.
The commission said Apple gathered Siri users’ voice recordings, along with text transcripts of those recordings, without permission until August 2019. Apple began seeking consent for voice recordings that October, but did not extend the same requirement to transcripts, the watchdog said.
![[Creative Work] Leron Leron Sinta x Mighty Hotdog](https://marketech-apac.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Creative-Work-Leron-Leron-Sinta-x-Mighty-Hotdog.webp)