Oct 25, 2018
Facebook fined £500,000 for Cambridge Analytica scandal
Facebook has been fined £500,000 by the UK's data protection watchdog for its role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The fine is the maximum allowed under the old data protection rules that applied before GDPR took effect in May. The ICO said Facebook had given app developers access to people's data "Without clear consent". Confirming the fine, it said in a statement: "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.". Researcher Dr Aleksandr Kogan and his company GSR used a personality quiz to harvest the Facebook data of up to 87 million people. Some of this data was shared with Cambridge Analytica, which used it to target political advertising in the US. "Even after the misuse of the data was discovered in December 2015, Facebook did not do enough to ensure those who continued to hold it had taken adequate and timely remedial action, including deletion," the ICO said.
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