The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly launching an investigation into Facebook over whether it violated terms of consent in the wake of reports a data firm harvested information from millions of profiles.
Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that the investigation relates to whether Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica, the data firm used by the Trump campaign, to obtain some Facebook users’ personal data in violation of its policies.
“We are aware of the issues that have been raised but cannot comment on whether we are investigating,” an FTC spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We take any allegations of violations of our consent decrees very seriously as we did in 2012 in a privacy case involving Google.”
The FTC fined Google $22.5 million in that case for collecting data on users of Apple’s Safari browser without their knowledge. Google at the time had been under a consent decree with the FTC for an earlier privacy violation, and the FTC said that the Safari incident violated that agreement.
Facebook reached a similar consent decree with the FTC in 2011 over charges that it deceived users into thinking their information was private even though it was being shared publicly. That agreement prohibits Facebook from making “misrepresentations about the privacy or security of consumers’ personal information.”
- Discussion
-
#BREAKING: FTC launches investigation into Facebook for use of personal data: report https://t.co/3RyDb7Z0uG pic.twitter.com/i8VWanxvpA
— The Hill (@thehill) March 20, 2018
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.