META Meta Platforms Inc

By Dominic Chopping

Facebook owner Meta Platforms can be fined in Norway for breaching data protection laws, an Oslo court ruled on Wednesday, dismissing Meta's attempt for a temporary injunction.

Norway's data protection authority, known as Datatilsynet, imposed a daily fine of one million Norwegian kroner ($93,279) per day from Aug. 14 on Meta, claiming the company's use of behaviour-based marketing within Facebook and Instagram to be illegal. The practice sees a user's activity on a site tracked, with the data then used for marketing.

The company had sought to appeal the fine--which runs for three months--claiming that the data protection authority's decision was invalid due to a lack of advance notice, and that it didn't have the authority to make such decisions.

However, the Oslo District Court on Wednesday ruled in favour of Datatilsynet, saying the regulator's assessment is valid.

"This is a big victory for privacy," Datatilsynet director Line Coll said in a statement.

Meta has its European headquarters in Dublin, and is therefore usually under the jurisdiction of the Irish Data Protection Authority concerning matters within the European single market. However, Datatilsynet said it can intervene directly in urgent cases such as this.

Norway isn't a member of the European Union, but Datatilsyet said it is considering bringing its decision to the European Data Protection Board and extending the ban to cover the entire European Union and single market.

"We are disappointed by today's decision and will now consider our next steps. We have already announced our intention to transition all EU and EEA users to the GDPR legal basis of Consent, and will continue to work with the Irish Data Protection Commission to facilitate this," a Meta company spokesperson said in an emailed statement,

In the meantime, Meta's services in Norway will continue unaffected, the spokesperson added.

GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, is a European Union regulation on data privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area.

Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 06, 2023 08:46 ET (12:46 GMT)

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