[ad_1]
The New York Attorney General's office opened a Facebook investigation after the company discovered earlier this month that the company's contacts were owned by more than 1.5 million people without their consent.
"It's time for Facebook to be held accountable for how it handles consumers' personal information," said Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. "Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumer information while taking advantage of the exploitation of this data."
As of May 2016, Facebook automatically collected users' contact lists, collecting data on more than 1.5 million people. This data was then used to improve the social media company's ad targeting algorithms and other platform operations.
Facebook said that the collection and use of such data was an "unintended" consequence of a system used to verify the identity of the user, and that it was was quickly stopped after Internal business first reported practice earlier this month.
Users have not consented to entrust their contacts to Facebook.
"The announcement by Facebook of the collection of 1.5 million e-mail address books and potential access to the contact information of hundreds of millions of consumers without their knowledge is the latest demonstration that Facebook does not take seriously its role in protecting our personal information, "James said.
according to the New York Times, the New York Attorney General's investigation will focus on how the incident occurred and the total number of people affected.
Yesterday, Facebook announced in its quarterly results that it planned a fine of $ 3 billion to $ 5 billion from the US Federal Trade Commission as a settlement following the Cambridge scandal investigation Analytica and potential privacy breaches that followed. It's hard to know when the FTC will officially announce the settlement or what the final sum will be.
[ad_2]
Source link