Facebook To Pay $725 Million Settlement Over Data Breach

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a long-running lawsuit accusing the social network of providing third companies, including Cambridge Analytica, access to users’ personal information.

The sum was revealed in a court filing late Thursday.

“The proposed settlement of $725,000,000 is the highest recovery ever attained in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote in their filing.

As part of the settlement, Facebook has not admitted any wrongdoing, which must still be approved by a judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia’s San Francisco division.

It was reported in August that Facebook had reached a preliminary agreement, although the amount and terms of the settlement were not then announced.

The lawsuit was initiated in 2018, when Facebook users accused the social network of violating privacy rules by sharing their data with third parties that included the British firm Cambridge Analytica, which had been linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Cambridge Analytica, which has since shut down, then collected and exploited the personal data of 87 million Facebook users without their consent, the lawsuit alleged.

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That information was allegedly used to develop software to steer US voters in favor of Trump.
Facebook has since removed access to its data from thousands of apps suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information available to developers, and made it easier for users to calibrate restrictions on personal data sharing.

Federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 for misleading its users and imposed independent oversight of its personal data management.

AFP

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