Barely a year after the FTC reached an agreement with Facebook to settle the Cambridge Analytica issue, the issue is still haunting them.
In the same fashion, Australia is also suing the company. Twisting the script a little bit, the Australian privacy watchdog is suing the company for allegedly breaching the Australian privacy law.
It accuses the company of mishandling user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal where millions were affected. The data breach affected millions of users around the globe and about 311,127 users in Australia. Particularly, Australia is only interested in its own, so the suit is based on the affected local users.
The privacy watchdog accuses the company of sharing data on over 300,000 local users to the now-defunct political advisory firm that was allegedly used for political profiling.
According to Australian data privacy law, a single breach could cost a company AU$1.7 million. For instance, if the court would decide to fine the company the maximum penalty, the watchdog will pat away with a total of AU$529 billion. Or, roughly 348 billion US dollars.
Facebook has been on the receiving end since the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. The company was accused of sharing data on millions of users to the political firm via its survey tool.
To settle the matter, the UK privacy watchdog fined the company £500,000, which a drop in the ocean, but that came before the stringent GDPR rules were implemented. On the other hand, the FTC slammed it a $5 billion fine.
Facebook has since rolled out preventive measures on the platform, specifically clamping down on the information available to app developers.
