Facebook must pay a millionaire fine | By the m …

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday announced an agreement with Facebook that the social network would be punished with $ 5,000 million for mismanaging user privacy and would hold Mark Zuckerberg to account. for this subject.

This is the biggest fine ever imposed in the country on a technology company and one of the largest in the history of the FTC, but even so, Democratic members of the regulator have complained that it did not go far enough and Solve the bad practices of Facebook at the root.

In addition to the sanction, the Menlo Park, California-based company has committed to a series of agreed measures to improve its privacy activities, including Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of the company, to personally certify the progress made. in this domain.

Thus, if Zuckerberg had lied and his statements did not correspond to real improvements within the company, he could be sued, both civil and criminal, for giving false testimony.

The FTC said that WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, companies owned by the Facebook conglomerate, also had to abide by the terms of the deal with the US authorities.

"Facebook must review its privacy policies for any product, service or practice, new or changed, before it is implemented and document all of its privacy policy decisions," the regulator said.

The FTC's Facebook inquiry has covered several aspects of the company's user data management, although it has put special emphasis on the biggest scandal of all who splashed the firm in recent years. years: the British Cambridge Analytica consultant.

In March 2018, it was revealed that the company had used data from internet users without their permission to establish psychological profiles of US voters, which would have been sold in particular to US President Donald Trump's campaign during elections of 2016..

The FTC determined that Facebook had broken the law by allowing third parties to obtain this data, after using phone numbers provided for security reasons to send ads and lied to users by telling them that their facial recognition system had been disabled. default (the user should not do anything to disable it).

Sanctions to the social network were approved in the FTC by three votes for and two against, corresponding respectively to the Republican and Democrat representatives.

The rejection of the agreement by the progressives is explained by the fact that they understood that it was insufficient and that it did not solve "Facebook's financial incentives to endanger the privacy and national security, "they said in a statement.

For its part, the company stated that the agreement reached gave it "a new comprehensive framework for the protection of the privacy of individuals" and promised to put in place "privacy controls similar to those controls financial ".

Along with the FTC, another US agency, the Securities Market Commission (SEC), also announced Wednesday a new fine to Facebook, worth 100 million euros, for failing to duly informed its investors. privacy practices, which made them take risks without knowing it.

The SEC found that Zuckerberg had not properly informed its investors that developers and others outside the company had obtained user data without their permission, in violation of Facebook's policies.

The social network will present its financial results corresponding to the first half of its fiscal year 2019, followed by a teleconference in which the most likely officials will be investigated regarding these fines and will ask for explanations on the reasons why they do not respect protection. user data.