{"id":50882,"date":"2026-02-02T17:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T22:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=50882"},"modified":"2026-02-02T17:29:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T22:29:00","slug":"apple-and-kakao-pay-fined-over-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/apple-and-kakao-pay-fined-over-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple and Kakao Pay Fined Over Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Proton’s Tech Fines Tracker<\/a> (via Ben Lovejoy<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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While $7.8 billion in fines sounds substantial, it represents little more than a rounding error for Big Tech. Based on free cash flow, Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Amazon could collectively pay off all 2025 penalties in just 28 days and 48 minutes. Alphabet alone — fined more than $4 billion — could wipe out its penalties in about three weeks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Here’s one that I missed<\/a> at the time:<\/p>\n

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During the February 25 meeting with the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), Apple representatives were asked which other countries used Apple’s NSF scores.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The incident in question stemmed from data collected by Kakao Pay, a mobile payment and digital wallet service based in South Korea. The data was sent to Alipay, a Singapore-based mobile payment platform.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

KakaoPay customers were not being told that their data was being transferred overseas. This sort of data collection is a direct violation of South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). <\/p>\n

Additionally, Apple did not disclose that it had a trustee relationship with Alipay. PIPA required Apple to be transparent about the relationship, but it did not mention Alipay in its privacy policy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I find this reporting confusing, but it sounds like Apple was partnering with an online payment service (akin to PayPal) that could be used to pay for transactions users made using their Apple account. Apple gave Kakao Pay access to customer information (such as NSF scores), which it then transmitted to its partner Alipay. 40 million users were affected, but the fines only totaled $3.2 million.<\/p>\n\n

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Data collection occurred between April and July 2018 and affected roughly 40 million users. According to PIPC, “less than 20% of users registered Kakao Pay with Apple as a payment method, but Kakao Pay sent the information of all users, including not only Apple users but also non-Apple users (e.g. Android users), to Alipay.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I don’t understand whether this is saying that Apple had 20% marketshare and the rest were Android or that data from iOS users who were not<\/em> using Kakao Pay was nonetheless shared, too.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n