US: $5bn fine against Facebook
- Noa Geva, CIPP/E, Adv.
- Jul 15, 2019
- 1 min read
The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Facebook over the company’s 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The fine represents the largest ever imposed by the FTC against a tech company.
The FTC began probing Facebook in March 2018 following reports that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly accessed the data of 87 million Facebook users.
The $5bn fine would be the largest ever levied by the FTC against a technology company, and the largest ever against any company for a privacy violation.
It is at the upper limit of what Facebook was expecting when it disclosed in April 2019 an expected fine of between $3bn and $5bn.
As part of the agreement, Facebook will now reexamine the ways it handles user data, but the settlement will not restrict the company’s ability to share data with third parties, reports said.
Despite all the criticism of the company, it has continued to do well financially. The social network reaped more than $55 billion in revenue in 2018 — 10 times the amount of the fine approved by the commission.
Source: The New York Times
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