Skip to main content

Facebook Fined £500,000 for Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal


Facebook has finally been slapped with its first fine of £500,000 for allowing political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica to improperly gather and misuse data of 87 million users.

The fine has been imposed by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and was calculated using the UK's old Data Protection Act 1998 which can levy a maximum penalty of £500,000 — ironically that’s equals to the amount Facebook earns every 18 minutes.

The news does not come as a surprise as the U.K.'s data privacy watchdog already notified the social network giant in July this year that the commission was intended to issue the maximum fine.

For those unaware, Facebook has been under scrutiny since earlier this year when it was revealed that the personal data of 87 million users was improperly gathered and misused by political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, who reportedly helped Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016.

The ICO, who launched an investigation the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March, said that the data from at least 1 million British citizens was "unfairly processed," and that Facebook "failed to take appropriate technical and organisational measures" to prevent the data from falling into the wrong hands.

"The ICO's investigation found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent, and allowing access even if users had not downloaded the app, but were simply 'friends' with people who had," the ICO said confirming the fine.

Besides this, the ICO also stressed that the social network also "failed to make suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform," which eventually expose the personal data of up to 87 million people worldwide, without their knowledge.

In response to the ICO announcement, Facebook noted that the company is reviewing the ICO decision, highlighting its previous admission that Facebook "should have done more" to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica in 2015.

"We are grateful that the ICO has acknowledged our full co-operation throughout their investigation and have also confirmed they have found no evidence to suggest UK Facebook users' data was in fact shared with Cambridge Analytica," says a Facebook spokesperson in a statement.

"Now that their investigation is complete, we are hopeful that the ICO will now let us have access to CA servers so that we are able to audit the data they received."

However, the £500,000 fine is just a drop in the ocean for a company like Facebook that brought in £31.5 billion in global revenue last year.

The penalty could have been much larger had it fallen under EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), wherein a company could face a maximum fine of 20 million euros or 4% of its annual global revenue, whichever is higher, for such a privacy breach.

Facebook's annual revenue was nearly £31.5 billion in 2017, which could have resulted in a possible fine of £1.26 billion under the GDPR rules. But luckily for Facebook that GDPR came into force in May 2018 after the timing of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Last month, the UK's data protection watchdog also issued the maximum allowed fine of £500,000 on credit reporting agency Equifax for its last year's massive data breach that exposed personal and financial data of hundreds of millions of its customers.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Microsoft To Update Windows ‘Notepad App’ After Years, Teases New Features

E very week or the other, Microsoft releases a new build for the fast ring insiders. The latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17713 bring a pack of surprises for Windows users. Redmond always listens to users, and this time, they have heard to Notepad users who were fed up with the uninteresting interface. Microsoft is giving its text editor Notepad new features after a very long time. Yes, the very same app that people use to write random text, create batch files and HTML pages, etc. Among the new Notepad features being added to Windows, you would be able to zoom into text by using the mouse wheel while holding down the Ctrl key. A long requested feature is coming for users; Microsoft is adding ctrl+backspace support to delete a previous word. Other than these, you will now have the ability to wrap around find and replace. Also, the status bar is now enabled by default in Notepad. There are few performance improvements for large...

Google starts rolling out ‘Call Screen’ feature for Pixel smartphones

San Francisco, Dec 2 (IANS) Google has started rolling out a feature for its Pixel smartphones that lets users make use of the Google Assistant to see who is calling and why before they answer a call. The feature allows users to see a real-time transcript of how the caller responds so that they can then decide whether to pick up, respond by tapping a quick reply (for example, “I’ll call you back later”), or mark the call as spam and dismiss. “Call Screen is only available to English speakers in the United States who have Pixel 2, 2 XL, 3, or 3XL devices. If you don’t see Call Screen in the Phone app’s settings, it’s not available yet,” Google said. Call Screen, which can help users save the time spent on picking up unimportant calls from unknown numbers, does not use Wi-Fi or mobile data of the user. This feature does not work with third-party call recording and screen recording apps as these apps may interfere with how the feature works. It is better to turn off these app...

Chrome Web Browser Will Now Use 10% More RAM With Spectre Fix

A new security feature named ‘Site Isolation’ has been introduced for Google Chrome 67 which would nullify the effects of speculative execution side-channel attacks like Spectre. To put things to the perspective, Spectre is one of the two fundamental design flaws in the  modern processors, which allow programs to get access to the data for which it is not authorized. Malicious data can exploit this flaw to steal your password and other personal information. What is Site Isolation? The new Site Isolation feature introduced in Google Chrome 67 brings about a fundamental change to Chrome’s architecture. Now, Chrome has changed how its multi-process architecture worked and different tabs used different render processes. According to the new architecture, Chrome limits each renderer process to a single site. By this separation of processes, Google aims to prevent direct memory reading across different processes to safeguard users’ data. According to G...