It was earlier this year in July when FTC slapped Facebook with a record-breaking $5 billion fine for violating consumers’. And the tech giant got hit with another fine of 6.6 million reais ($1.6 million) before the end of the year by Brazil’s Ministry of Justice, yesterday, for improper sharing of user data, reports Reuters.
As per the report, the ministry’s department of consumer protection found that data from 443,000 Facebook users had been “improperly” made available to developers of an App, named “thisisyourdigitallife”. According to the ministry, this data was being shared for “questionable” purposes. It also further added that the social media giant failed to offer users with adequate information about default privacy settings, specifically related to data of “friends” and “friends of friends”. The ministry launched an investigation post the reports of Cambridge Analytica scandal back in 2018.
In an emailed statement, Facebook said it was evaluating its legal options surrounding the case. “We are focused on protecting people’s privacy”. It also stated it has also restricted “the information which App developers can access.” Facebook has only got 10 days to appeal the decision and the fine needs to be paid within 30 days.
In another news, Facebook recently got hit with another data breach where data of 267 million users including phone numbers, user IDs, and names were left exposed in an online database.
