Tech giants such as Google and Facebook will be forced to cough up far more cash if they breach privacy laws, under sweeping changes proposed to help protect the personal information of Australians

Social media companies and online platforms that seriously or repeatedly breach privacy laws would be fined $10 million under the reforms, compared to the current penalty of $2.1 million.

Alternatively, they could be charged three times the value of any benefit obtained by misusing information or 10 per cent of their annual domestic turnover, depending on which figure is greater.

For some companies, that could mean paying upwards of $100 million.