Meta
Platforms,
the
parent
company
of
Facebook,
Instagram,
and
WhatsApp,
has
agreed
to
pay
$725
million
to
settle
a
long-running
class-action
lawsuit
filed
in
2018.
The
legal
dispute
sprang
up
in
response
to
revelations
that
the
social
media
giant
allowed
third-party
apps
such
as
those,
including
Cambridge
Analytica
to
access
users’
personal
information
without
their
consent
for
political
advertising.
The
proposed
settlement,
first
reported
by
Reuters
last
week,
is
the
latest
penalty
paid
by
the
company
in
the
wake
of
a
number
of
privacy
mishaps
through
the
years.
It
still
requires
the
approval
of
a
federal
judge
in
the
San
Francisco
division
of
the
U.S.
District
Court.
It’s
worth
noting
that
Facebook
previously
sought
to
dismiss
the
lawsuit
in
September
2019,
claiming
users
have
no
legitimate
privacy
interest
in
any
information
they
make
available
to
their
friends
on
social
media.
The
data
harvesting
scandal,
which
came
to
light
in
March
2018,
involved
a
personality
quiz
app
called “thisisyourdigitallife”
that
allowed
users’
public
profiles,
page
likes,
dates
of
birth,
genders,
locations,
and
even
messages
(in
some
cases)
to
be
collected
for
building
psychographic
profiles.
The
app
was
developed
by
an
academic
researcher
named
Aleksandr
Kogan
and
his
company
Global
Science
Research
(GSR)
in
2013
as
part
of
a
collaboration
with
Cambridge
Analytica,
a
British
political
consultancy
firm
owned
by
SCL
Group.
While
around
300,000
users
are
said
to
have
taken
the
psychological
test,
the
app
collected
the
private
data
of
those
who
installed
the
app
as
well
as
their
Facebook
friends
without
seeking
explicit
permission,
leading
to
a
dataset
spanning
87
million
profiles.
thisisyourdigitallife
was
subsequently
banned
by
Facebook
in
2015
for
contravention
of
its
platform
policy,
with
the
company
also
sending
a
legal
request
to
GSR
and
Cambridge
Analytica
to
delete
the
improperly
acquired
data.
Only
it
turned
out
later
that
the
unauthorized
data
was
never
purged
to
begin
with
and
that
the
consulting
firm,
now
defunct,
used
the
personal
information
from
millions
of
Facebook
accounts
for
purposes
of
voter
profiling
and
targeting
ahead
of
the
2016
U.S.
presidential
election.
“This
was
a
breach
of
trust
between
Kogan,
Cambridge
Analytica,
and
Facebook,”
CEO
Mark
Zuckerberg
said
at
the
time. “But
it
was
also
a
breach
of
trust
between
Facebook
and
the
people
who
share
their
data
with
us
and
expect
us
to
protect
it.”
The
bombshell
expose
fueled
government
scrutiny
on
both
sides
of
the
Atlantic,
prompting
the
company
to
settle
with
the
U.S.
Securities
and
Exchange
Commission
(SEC)
and
the
U.K.
Information
Commissioner’s
Office
(ICO)
in
2019.
The
same
year,
Meta
was
also
slapped
with
a
record-breaking
$5
billion
fine
following
a
probe
initiated
by
the
U.S.
Federal
Trade
Commission
(FTC)
into
its
privacy
practices
and
to
settle
charges
that
the
firm
undermined
users’
choice
to
control
the
privacy
of
their
personal
information.
Meta
–
which
has
not
admitted
to
any
wrongdoing
in
relation
to
the
problematic
data-sharing
practice
–
has
since
taken
steps
to
curtail
third-party
access
to
user
information.
The
tech
giant
further
rolled
out
a
tool
called
Off-Facebook
Activity
for
users
to “see
a
summary
of
the
apps
and
websites
that
send
us
information
about
your
activity,
and
clear
this
information
from
your
account
if
you
want
to.”
