POLICY
POLICY
POLICY
UK fines Facebook for Cambridge Analytica breach as EU lawmakers demand audit
The U.K’s privacy watchdog today hit Facebook Inc. with a 500,000-pound fine over its handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, upholding a July decision that the social network unsuccessfully tried to contest.
The sum, which amounts to $664,000, won’t make much of a dent in the company’s bottom line. Analysts polled by Zacks Investment Research project that Facebook will report third-quarter revenues of $13.81 billion in its earnings call next week.
However, the fine comes as a strong symbolic response to the Cambridge Analytica row: It represents the maximum penalty that regulators could level against the social network.
The penalty comes seven months after it came to light that a Facebook app created by Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan harvested data about some 87 million users. Some of the information was shared with SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. Both firms have since shut down.
The U.K.’s privacy watchdog wrote in today’s verdict that Facebook failed to “make suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform” and “did not do enough to ensure those who continued to hold it had taken adequate and timely remedial action.” The body found that the Facebook app in question collected data about a million U.K. users, but said it found no evidence to suggest the records were shared with Cambridge Analytica.
Still, the watchdog said that the leak put users’ data “at serious risk” of abuse. The ruling noted that Facebook could have faced a penalty as high as 1.2 billion pounds, or $1.54 billion, had the incident occurred after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation came into effect.
EU lawmakers are taking an active stance toward Facebook’s privacy issues as well. Against the backdrop of the U.K. ruling, the European Parliament this morning passed a resolution urging that the company let EU officials audit its data protection and security practices. Lawmakers also called on social networks to adopt tougher policies towards issues such as bot activity on their platforms.
Image: Book Catalog/Flickr
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