Facebook has agreed to pay $9 million Canadian dollars (6,5 US dollars) to Canada for violating privacy laws regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The Competition Bureau of Canada announced this after a departmental investigation that found that the company made false or misleading statements about the privacy of Canadians' personal information on Facebook and Messenger.
"Canadians expect and deserve the truth from digital economy businesses, and privacy claims are no exception," Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell said in a statement.
"The Competition Office will not hesitate to crack down on any activity that makes false or misleading claims to Canadians about how they use personal data, whether they are multinationals like Facebook or smaller companies."
In addition, the Canadian Competition Office said that the technology company improperly shared data with third-party developers without the consensus of his users.
As part of the agreement, Facebook has agreed not to make false or misleading statements about the disclosure of personal information.
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
The investigation was launched following the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 and examined Facebook practices between August 2012 and June 2018.
The fine comes a year after the federal privacy commissioner found that Facebook committed serious violations of Canadian privacy laws and did not take responsibility for protecting Canadians' personal information resulting from the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In that incident, an app called "This Is Your Digital Life" created by an American developer who posed as a personality quiz collected information about users and their Facebook friends.
The data of approximately 87 million users, including 600,000 Canadians, were then shared with Cambridge Analytica, which used them to create psychographic models for targeting advertisements in various U.S. political campaigns.
December 2019: Facebook exposed the data of 267 million users
A big database containing more than 267 million user Ids, telephone numbers and names of users of the social netowork remained "exposed" for several days on the web, that is, open and accessible to all without the need to enter passwords or resort to other forms of authentication . This was revealed by the Comparitech technology site which, in collaboration with security expert Bob Diachenko, brought the database to light. The first appearance on the web of the database dates back to December 4, the researchers say.
A Facebook spokesman said that the database is now offline and that the company is "examining the problem". The company believes it is "information most likely obtained before the changes we have made in recent years to better protect people's information." Facebook has in fact hanged the API rules and third party developers 'access to users' phone numbers in 2018, in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The data shown would therefore be a couple of years old.
According to Diachenko, the data set is most likely the result of an illegal operation on Facebook data or an abuse of the social network Bees by cyber criminals based in Vietnam. The information contained in the database could be to conduct extensive spamming or phishing campaigns via SMS.
November 2019: Facebook, 100 developers have violated the data policy
In April 2018 (after the Cambridge Analytica scandal) Facebook changed the terms of its service in an attempt to avoid abuse of personal data, explained the social media. But during the first days of November 2019 the company led by Mark Zuckerberg found that some third party developers may have retained access to the data of the groups in which, in theory, they no longer had to enter, such as group name, number of users, content of posts and photos of people who are part of it.
The apps that have preserved access to data now precluded by the new terms of service are mainly social media management and video streaming applications designed to make it easier for administrators to manage groups and allow you to share videos within the group, has explained Facebook in a post on his official blog. The company has ensured that it has removed unauthorized access and contacted the 100 developers of its partners who may have had inappropriate access to user data. The Menlo Park company specified that at least 11 of these developers have accessed this type of data in the past 60 days before the breach was fixed.
For violations of personal data of American citizens, the Zuckerberg company was fined by the Federal trade commission for $ 5 billion. The federal agency has also imposed closer government control over Facebook's activity and periodic audits to monitor respect for privacy.
Facebook has agreed to pay the £ 500,000 penalty for the Cambridge Analytica case imposed last year by the British regulator Ico (Information Commissioner's Office)
British regulator punished Facebook for allowing the personal data breach of at least 1 million UK users via the now-defunct political marketing firm Cambridge Analytica's data capture app. The fine imposed is the highest possible in the United Kingdom in case of violation of the privacy law but a symbolic figure for a giant like Facebook.
"The main concern for the ICO is that UK citizen data have been exposed to a serious risk of harmful consequences. The protection of personal information and privacy is of paramount importance, "said the authority. "We are pleased to know that Facebook has taken measures and will continue to act to align itself with the essential principles of data protection”
In announcing the fine, in July 2018, the British regulator explained that Facebook has violated its own privacy policies and has not ensured that Cambridge Analytica has deleted the traces of the data collected by its servers: this has allowed the company to keep predictive models built on millions of social profiles obtained during the US presidential election.
The authority said it was concerned not only by a generic lack of social media oversight, but by the fact that political parties regularly purchase personal information from data brokers in order to influence public opinion and voting intentions.
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