Facebook to Pay $725 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over Cambridge Analytica Data Leak

Facebook’s FALL Is On The Horizon … TICK TOCK

Facebook to Pay $725 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over Cambridge Analytica Data Leak

Ravie Lakshmanan with The Hacker News reports:

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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 used by 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 to be collected for building psychographic profiles.