More problems for Meta. mark zuckerbergthe CEO of Goalhas decided to end ‘at the punch of a checkbook’ with a real headache that tormented him since 2018. A lawsuit filed against the company determined that the user data had been transferred, without the consent of the users. 87 million people to the British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. It is also closely linked to the electoral campaign of the former president donald trump.
Everything indicates that the data was obtained through an application developed by a third party, although of all the victims, only 270,000 users They gave their consent and the appropriate permissions to the transfer of their data through the application ‘This is Your Digital Life’. They therefore skipped Facebook Data Protection Policy.
Meta is forced to pay 725 million dollars (almost 682 million euros), as a fine, although it ensures that no irregularity or illegal activity was ever committed.
The claim became of a collective nature, since it was joined by complaints of other problematic data exchanges by Facebook, accused of giving numerous third parties access to its content and confidential information. Consequently, an inability of Zuckerberg’s company to supervise such transactions is alleged.
Therefore, those 725 million dollars will be distributed among 280 million affected Facebook users for this and other cases of data leaks without explicit consent. From there each lawyer will take 25% as fees.
A case from ancient times
According to Meta, they do it for the good of their users, their shareholders and the company, although they have already paid in advance. 1 billion dollars for this case. In fact, Zuckerberg himself appeared in the US Congress to answer questions from lawmakers.
Already in 2019, Facebook decided to pay 5 billion dollars to end an investigation launched by the Federal Trade Commission into the company’s privacy practices. To this is added another 100 million dollars in accusations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
You learn from mistakes, and since that year, Facebook has been renewing its privacy approach and incorporating a comprehensive safety program novel.
Curiously, the British consultancy filed for bankruptcy in May 2018 ensuring that it was no longer viable to continue with the business.
It had been dragging years of very harsh criticism and bad opinion, especially after this unauthorized data sharing came to light by reporters from The New York Times and The Observer, who published that Cambridge Analytica still had copies of the data. All this after his false promise. that I would delete them in 2015.
Despite the payment made by Meta, now it remains to wait for the resolution of a federal judge in San Francisco. And even from Reuters it is pointed out that Zuckerberg’s company would have challenged a Washington Attorney General’s Lawsuit.
Be that as it may, it represents a before and after in the matter of the Data Protection Law and a record in the amount paid by Facebook to face a private class action lawsuit.
From now on, not only Facebook but all companies will take care before marketing with private information and not preserving the private data of their users.
