Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Italy stings Facebook with $1.1M fine for Cambridge Analytica data misuse

Italy’s data protection watchdog has issued Facebook with a €1 million (~$1.1M) fine for violations of local privacy law attached to the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

Last year it emerged that up to 87 million Facebook users had had their data siphoned out of the social media giant’s platform by an app developer working for the controversial (and now defunct) political data company, Cambridge Analytica.

The offences in question occurred prior to Europe’s tough new data protection framework, GDPR, coming into force — hence the relatively small size of the fine in this case, which has been calculated under Italy’s prior data protection regime. (Whereas fines under GDPR can scale as high as 4% of a company’s annual global turnover.)

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.

Last year the UK’s DPA similarly issued Facebook with a £500k penalty for the Cambridge Analytica breach, although Facebook is appealing.

The Italian regulator says 57 Italian Facebook users downloaded Dr Aleksandr Kogan‘s Thisisyourdigitallife quiz app, which was the app vehicle used to scoop up Facebook user data en masse — with a further 214,077 Italian users’ also having their personal information processed without their consent as a result of how the app could access data on each user’s Facebook friends.

In an earlier intervention in March, the Italian regulator challenged Facebook over the misuse of the data — and the company opted to pay a reduced amount of €52,000 in the hopes of settling the matter.

However the Italian DPA has decided that the scale of the violation of personal data and consent disqualifies the case for a reduced payment — so it has now issued Facebook with a €1M fine.

“The sum takes into account, in addition to the size of the database, also the economic conditions of Facebook and the number of global and Italian users of the company,” it writes in a press release on its website [translated by Google Translate]. 

At the time of writing its full decision on the case was not available.

Late last year the Italian regulator fined Facebook €10M for misleading users over its sign in practices.

While, in 2017, it also slapped the company with a €3M penalty for a controversial decision to begin helping itself to WhatsApp users’ data — despite the latter’s prior claims that user data would never be shared with Facebook.

Going forward, where Facebook’s use (and potential misuse) of Europeans’ data is concerned, all eyes are on the Irish Data Protection Commission; aka its lead regulator in the region on account of the location of Facebook’s international HQ.

The Irish DPC has a full suite of open investigations into Facebook and Facebook-owned companies — covering major issues such as security breaches and questions over the legal basis it claims to process people’s data, among a number of other big tech related probes.

The watchdog has suggested decisions on some of this tech giant-related case-load could land this summer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line
Post a Comment
Read more

How the world’s largest cannabis dispensary avoids social media restrictions

Planet 13 is the world’s largest cannabis dispensary. Located in Las Vegas, blocks off the Strip, the facility is the size of a small Walmart. By design, it’s hard to miss. Planet 13 is upending the dispensary model. It’s big, loud and visitors are encouraged to photograph everything. As part of the cannabis industry, Planet 13 is heavily restricted on the type of content it can publish on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It’s not allowed to post pictures of buds or vapes on some sites. It can’t talk about pricing or product selection on others.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Morgan Celeste SF Blogger (@bayareabeautyblogger) on Jan 25, 2020 at 7:54pm PST Instead, Planet 13 encourages its thousands of visitors to take photos and videos. Starting with the entrance, the facility is full of surprises tailored for the ‘gram. As a business, Planet 13’s social media content is heavily restricted and monito
3 comments
Read more