The Cambridge Analytica scandal, which misused 87 million personal data of Facebook users, resulted in the company headed by Mark Zuckerberg being fined USD 5 billion.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has investigated the case and as a result, as quoted by the BBC, Sunday (14/7/2019) Facebook incorrectly shared the information of 87 million users with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
The FTC has been investigating Facebook since March 2018 following reports of misuse of Facebook users’ personal data by Cambridge Analytica.
The investigation focused on whether the world’s largest social media service provider had violated a 2011 agreement that required it to clearly notify users and obtain “written consent” to share their data.
This sanction was imposed based on a 3-2 vote that judged Facebook to be negligent in protecting its users’ personal data.
The majority of the 87 million user data that were misused came from the United States (US), 70 million for the purposes of the 2016 US presidential election.
Even for the US presidential election, it is clear that user data that has been misused has emerged from other countries. For example, Facebook users come from the Philippines (1.1 million users), Indonesia (1.09 million users), to those from the United Kingdom (1.07 million users).
Regarding this result, both the FTC and Facebook did not provide comment. Previously, the fine was estimated by Facebook earlier this year which predicted that the amount of the fine would not be much different from that imposed by the FTC.
For information, the fine of USD 5 billion to Facebook is the largest sanction carried out by the FTC to a technology company.
