South Korea's privacy regulator imposed a record 624.7 billion won ($410 million) fine on Coupang over a massive data breach affecting 37.5 million users and other privacy violations. Authorities found the e-commerce giant failed to adequately protect customer information, collected online activity data without consent, and improperly managed advertising partners.

Seoul: South Korea's data protection regulator on Thursday fined e-commerce company Coupang a record 624.7 billion won ($410 million) over privacy violations, including a massive data breach that affected more than 37 million users.

Record fine for data breach and violations
The Personal Information Protection Commission has decided to impose a record fine of 423.6 billion won for the data breach and levy an additional 201.1 billion won in fine for the unauthorised collection of records of online user activities and other violations.

It marked the regulator's highest fine ever against a company for a single data breach and multiple violations, reports Yonhap news agency.

Watchdog cites lack of protection systems
"Coupang is a company that grew dramatically by offering an innovative e-commerce service based on large-scale customer information," Song Kyung-hee, the watchdog's chief, said in a briefing. "But our investigation confirmed that it did not have a system to protect and manage personal information commensurate to that."