Britain fined Facebook 500,000 pounds for the Cambridge Analytica scandal

The United Kingdom Data Protection Agency (ICO), sanctioned 500,000 pounds at Facebook. The fine is the highest allowed by English regulations.

This is the first economic sanction of the social network for allowing Cambridge Analytica political consultant to obtain the personal data of millions of Facebook users.

Chairman of the Media Committee of the Parliament of Great Britain, Damian Collins, said that they had come to the conclusion that Facebook "violated the law by not protecting the law." information of the people ".

The company "must now disclose the results of its internal investigations to ICO, to our commission and to other relevant investigative authorities," Collins said.

Facebook has been under surveillance since it became known that London-based Cambridge Analytica consulting firm used information from tens of millions of social network users to help the presidential campaign Donald Trump in 2016.

The offenses occurred before the implementation of the European General Regulation on Data Protection, which allows much larger fines for companies.

The announced fine is the maximum possible for the scandal that erupted in March. Although the penalty is low for Facebook, it is a warning for many companies, which are now liable to fines of up to 2% of global revenue under EU protection regulations. data published in May.

Cambridge Analytica declared bankruptcy this year as a result of charges that it allegedly used personal information obtained from 87 million Facebook accounts to help Trump win the presidential election. The data would have helped Donald Trump's campaign to direct political advertising more precisely, giving them an idea of ​​what US Facebook users liked and hated.