Facebook fined £500,000 after firm harvested personal details
FACEBOOK will be hit with a record £500,000 fine over the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal.
It is the largest possible penalty that can be handed out by Britain’s information watchdog, which found the social media giant had broken the law by failing to safeguard millions of users’ data.
The Information Commissioner’s Office announced the fine as it revealed it was preparing a criminal prosecution against Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Elections Ltd. It has also sent ‘warning letters’ to 11 political parties in the UK. The ICO wants parties to undergo compulsory audits of their use of personal data, including the purchase of marketwas ing lists and lifestyle information to help target voters.
The watchdog is investigating whether data obtained from Facebook was misused by both the Leave and Remain campaigns during the EU referendum, and in the 2016 US presidential election.
Facebook has admitted the scandal – in which the personal information of 87million people was harvested by a quiz app and sold to a political campaign agency – was ‘clearly a breach of trust’.
The social network’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has apologised for an ‘oversight’ that allowed the personality quiz to mine the information of users. Facebook shut down the datasharing tool in 2014 and has said it became aware the data had been sold in 2015, but was assured it was deleted.
The social media giant has said it has since identified 200 other apps that may have been used the same way, and is investigating.
Cambridge Analytica, the London-based consultancy that was using the social media information to offer targeted political advertising, shut down in May.
Last week, Facebook’s share price fell after it emerged the FBI had opened its own probe into the scandal.
Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham issued the company with a ‘notice of intent’, warning that she plans to fine it £500,000 for two breaches of the Data Protection Act. She said she would consider its response before reaching a final decision. She added: ‘Trust and confidence in the integrity of our democratic processes risk being disrupted because the average voter has little idea of what is going on behind the scenes.
‘People cannot have control over their own data if they don’t know or understand how it is being used. That’s why greater and genuine transparency about the use of data analytics is vital.’
Tory MP Damian Collins, the chairman of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said Facebook should reveal the findings of its own investigations.
Facebook’s chief privacy officer Erin Egan said: ‘We should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and take action in 2015. We have been working closely with the ICO in their investigation.’