Facebook faces £500k fine for data scandal

FACEBOOK should be fined the maximum £500,000 for failing to protect users’ personal data which was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a watchdog says.

A probe was able to gather the data of up to 87 million participants as well as that of their Facebook contacts, who had not given consent.

The results were allegedly used by the data consultants to target US voters in Donald Trump’s election campaign. The Information Commissioner’s Office has recommended the maximum penalty allowed under the 1998 Data Protection Act, the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee heard.

The ICO said Facebook “contravened the law by failing to safeguard people’s information”. Chairman Damian Collins said: “It is essential we now know which other apps that ran on their platform may have scraped data in a similar way.”