Facebook faces a criminal investigation for the exchange of private data

Federal prosecutors New York they opened a criminal investigation against Facebook. He is accused to the platform to have shared with hundreds of companies the data of the users of the social network, without having their explicit consent, as indicated The New York Times.

According to the newspaper, a grand jury in New York officially asked "at least two major smartphone manufacturers" to provide information on the subject, which would involve hundreds of millions of users.

More than 150 companies are involved, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Sony. All would have concluded exchange agreements with the social network to access user information.

In this way, the social network would have allowed companies to view contact data, lists of friends and other data without the permission of the user.

Consulted by AFP, Facebook said that "it has already been reported that federal investigations were ongoing, including by the Ministry of Justice"

"As we said earlier, we cooperate with the investigators and take these investigations seriously, we have testified publicly, we have answered the questions and we have promised to continue this way," said a spokesman for the society.

The social network is in full controversy over the use of personal data of its users since the scandal of Cambridge Analytica (IT), which happened a year ago.

This is why regulators and researchers around the world are trying to determine if Facebook has somehow hidden the details of its data exchange practices.

In the United States alone, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission, (SEC), as well as the Ministry of Justice, are investigating Facebook's practices in managing its users' data since the CA scandal.

The personal data of tens of millions of users was, unknowingly, in the hands of the British company CA, specializing in data badysis and having worked in 2016 for the campaign of the Republican candidate Donald Trump, who later became president of the United States.

Facebook, with 2,300 million users, runs the risk of suffering civil and criminal trials, in addition to large fines, among other penalties. Only the FTC could impose a fine of $ 2,000 million.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal in the first place, then the data of the various leaks that followed affected the reputation of the company. Added to this is the new incident that was heard in December and is currently investigating justice.

Facebook agreements with hundreds of companies, including smartphones and other devices, are now under the banner of justice.

According to different badociations defending privacy, these alliances seem to violate a 2011 consent agreement between Facebook and the FTC, to the extent that the company would have shared data without the explicit and complete consent of users.

"The exchange agreements allowed Microsoft's Bing search engine to locate the friends of virtually all Facebook users without their explicit consent, and allowed Amazon to obtain the users' names and information." Apple could hide from Facebook users that their devices were asking for data, "he said. New York Times.