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Meta has been fined 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million) by South Korea's data privacy watchdog for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with advertisers without their consent. The country's Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Meta gathered information such as religious affiliations, political views, and same-sex marital status of about 980,000 domestic Facebook users and shared it with 4,000 advertisers. "Specifically, it was found that behavioral information, such as the pages that users 'liked' on Facebook and the ads they clicked on, was analyzed to create and operate advertising topics related to sensitive information," the PIPC said in a press statement. These topics categorized users as following a certain religion, identifying them as a gay or transgender person, or being a defector from North Korea, it added.  T...

The U.K. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has confirmed that professional social networking platform LinkedIn has suspended processing users' data in the country to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. "We are pleased that LinkedIn has reflected on the concerns we raised about its approach to training generative AI models with information relating to its U.K. users," Stephen Almond, executive director of regulatory risk, said . "We welcome LinkedIn's confirmation that it has suspended such model training pending further engagement with the ICO." Almond also said the ICO intends to closely keep an eye on companies that offer generative AI capabilities, including Microsoft and LinkedIn, to ensure that they have adequate safeguards in place and take steps to protect the information rights of U.K. users. The development comes after the Microsoft-owned company admitted to training its own AI on users' data without seeking their exp...

Serverless environments, leveraging services such as AWS Lambda, offer incredible benefits in terms of scalability, efficiency, and reduced operational overhead. However, securing these environments is extremely challenging. The core of current serverless security practices often revolves around two key components: log monitoring and static analysis of code or system configuration. But here is the issue with that: 1. Logs Only Tell Part of the Story Logs can track external-facing activities, but they don't provide visibility into the internal execution of functions. For example, if an attacker injects malicious code into a serverless function that doesn't interact with external resources (e.g., external APIs or databases), traditional log-based tools will not detect this intrusion. The attacker may execute unauthorized processes, manipulate files, or escalate privileges—all without triggering log events. 2. Static Misconfiguration Detection is Incomplete Static tools that check ...

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced that it has commenced a "Cross-Border statutory inquiry" into Google's foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model to determine whether the tech giant has adhered to data protection regulations in the region when processing the personal data of European users. "The statutory inquiry concerns the question of whether Google has complied with any obligations that it may have had to undertake an assessment, pursuant to Article 35[2] of the General Data Protection Regulation (Data Protection Impact Assessment), prior to engaging in the processing of the personal data of E.U./E.E.A. data subjects associated with the development of its foundational AI model, Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2)," the DPC said . PaLM 2 is Google's state-of-the-art language model with improved multilingual, reasoning, and coding capabilities. It was unveiled by the company in May 2023. With Google's European headqu...

Meta has suspended the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in Brazil after the country's data protection authority issued a preliminary ban objecting to its new privacy policy. The development was first reported by news agency Reuters. The company said it has decided to suspend the tools while it is in talks with Brazil's National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) to address the agency's concerns over its use of GenAI technology. Earlier this month, ANPD halted with immediate effect the social media giant's new privacy policy that granted the company access to users' personal data to train its GenAI systems. The decision stems from "the imminent risk of serious and irreparable damage or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights of the affected data subjects," the agency said. It further set a daily fine of 50,000 reais (about $9,100 as of July 18) in case of non-compliance. Last week, it gave Meta "five more days to p...