Woori Card was fined 13.4 billion won by the Personal Information Protection Committee for collecting personal information without permission and using it for marketing without obtaining consent from franchisees. Concerns are rising that Woori Card's performance improvement has been turned on as a high penalty, which is 11% of Woori Card's net profit, was imposed last year.

The Personal Information Commission announced on the 27th that it imposed a fine of 13.451 billion won on Woori Card and decided on a correction order and publication order the day before. It was not the damage caused by external intrusion such as hacking, but the use of Woori Card's own personal information database (DB). The Personal Information Commission imposed an unusually large fine on Woori Card for neglecting internal control by delegating the right to access personal information, including DB authority, file download authority and resident registration number, to the sales center.

The personal information collected by Woori Card amounted to 207,538 franchisees. According to the Personal Information Commission, Woori Card's Incheon sales center entered the business registration number of card merchants into the franchise management program from July 2022 to April 2024 to identify the personal information of at least 131,862 franchisees. This included names and resident registration numbers, as well as mobile phone numbers and addresses. From September 2023, we made a file after inquiring about the owner's personal information and whether Woori Card was in possession.

According to a survey by the Personal Information Commission, 74,692 of the franchisees did not agree to use marketing.

Woori Card explained that it took additional measures, such as arranging access to the internal terminal transaction system of sales center employees pointed out as the cause of the accident, collectively recovering access to DB, and requiring the approval of the information protection team to take out all external mails.

[Reporter Kim Kyu-sik / Reporter Park Na-eun]