Cambridge Analytica: all the news about Facebook’s data privacy scandal – The Verge

Facebook considered ad-free subscriptions after the Cambridge Analytica scandal

2025-04-17T14:13:48-04:00

Facebook

After the Cambridge Analytica data scandal broke in 2018, things got bad enough for Meta (then Facebook) that Mark Zuckerberg had to face Congress to try to explain what had happened. The focus on how much data Facebook had on everyone, including "shadow profiles" for non-Facebook users, was enough to shake financial markets and, eventually, prompt a public apology tour from Mark Zuckerberg.

Now we've learned from a slide presented today at FTC v. Meta during former COO Sheryl Sandberg's testimony that the company's board of directors considered offering ad-free Facebook subscriptions as part of its response to the backlash. With users real …

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Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg won’t be deposed over the Cambridge Analytica scandal

2022-08-26T21:05:48-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were in line to give hours of depositions in response to a lawsuit over Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, but now that won't happen - the company has reached a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs. As reported earlier by Reuters, a court filing reveals the parties have reached an agreement in principle and requested a stay of 60 days to finalize their written agreement. Without the settlement and stay, they would have been deposed before September 20th.

You can read the document for yourself below, but so far, there are no details about the terms of the agreement. Meta, as the …

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Mark Zuckerberg has been added to a DC lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica scandal

2021-10-20T12:09:21-04:00

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is adding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal. Racine announced the addition on Twitter this morning, saying his investigation had revealed that Zuckerberg was "personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's failure to protect user data."

The 2018 lawsuit accuses Facebook (and now Zuckerberg) of misrepresenting its policies around third-party data access and compromising user privacy with lax protections. The attorney general's office alleges that Facebook violated the Consumer Protection Procedures Act an …

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Facebook suspends ‘tens of thousands’ of apps from 400 developers over improper data use

2019-09-20T14:42:20-04:00

Facebook today announced that it has suspended "tens of thousands" of apps as part of an ongoing investigation into improper data use on the part of third-party developers. The investigation is part of a broader effort the company embarked on last year in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, which involved a political consulting firm purchasing data on tens of millions of Facebook users that had been collected, packaged, and sold by the maker of a quiz mobile app.

The tech giant has been slow to reveal the scope of its ongoing investigation. In May 2018, the company said 200 apps had been suspended; in August 2018, that …

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DC attorney general sues Facebook over Cambridge Analytica scandal

2018-12-19T12:30:32-05:00

The office of the Washington, DC attorney general announced today that it is filing a lawsuit against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The scandal erupted this year after it was revealed that Facebook had leaked the data of tens of millions of users by sharing the information with an academic, which was in turn obtained by the data firm. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hauled before Congress to testify after the revelation, and Cambridge Analytica has since folded, the lawsuit is the first major government action taken in the United States against Facebook over the incident.

Alleges lax privacy standards at Facebook

The …

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Facebook to appeal UK regulator’s Cambridge Analytica fine

2018-11-21T13:06:55-05:00

Facebook is appealing the £500,000 fine levied by the UK's data watchdog over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social network has confirmed. It says the decision taken by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is unjustified, and that the regulator found no evidence that UK users specifically had their information improperly shared. The news comes on the day Facebook's right to appeal was due to expire.

Facebook's lawyer, Anna Benckert, said that the ICO's fine "no longer relates to the events involving Cambridge Analytica" because it has found "no evidence" that Facebook users in the UK had their information shared with the a …

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UK data watchdog fines Facebook maximum legal amount for Cambridge Analytica scandal

2018-10-25T05:09:38-04:00

The UK's data watchdog has levied the maximum possible fine against Facebook for its failure to protect user's personal information in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The fine is just £500,000 ($644,000), a small fee for a company that posted $13.2 billion in revenue in the last quarter alone. But the figure was calculated using the UK's outdated 1998 Data Protection Act, and regulators say it would have been "significantly higher" under the EU's new GDPR regulations, which came into force in the UK in May.

"We considered these contraventions to be so serious we imposed the maximum penalty."

"We considered these contraventions to be so ser …

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Facebook shuts off access to user data for hundreds of thousands of apps

2018-07-31T18:35:37-04:00

Facebook this evening announced that it's shutting off access to its application programming interface, the developer platform that lets app makers access user data, for hundreds of thousands of inactive apps. The company had set an August 1st deadline back in May, during its F8 developer conference, for developers and businesses to re-submit apps to an internal review, a process that involves signing new contracts around user data collection and verifying one's authenticity.

The goal is to ensure third-party software on Facebook was in line with the company's data privacy rules and new restrictions put in place in the wake of the Cambridge …

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UK issues Facebook maximum fine over Cambridge Analytica

2018-07-10T18:11:00-04:00

United Kingdom regulators slapped Facebook with the maximum possible fine over this year's Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, several outlets reported Tuesday. The Washington Post was among those reporting that Facebook would have to pay £500,000, or about $664,000, after data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained information about millions of users and used it in an effort to sway the 2016 US presidential election.

The UK Information Commissioner's office found that Facebook lacked sufficient privacy protections and failed to catch warning signs that Cambridge Analytica was misusing people's data, the Post reported. …

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Maker of popular quiz apps on Facebook exposed personal data of 120 million users

2018-06-28T14:27:46-04:00

A developer of Facebook quizzes under the brand NameTests has been found to have exposed the personal information of as many as 120 million Facebook users, according to a report from TechCrunch. The company behind NameTests, German app maker Social Sweethearts, created popular social quizzes like "Which Disney Princess Are You?" and distributed them on Facebook, and it has around 120 million monthly users on the platform. Self-described hacker Inti De Ceukelaire wrote a Medium post yesterday, outlining how the quizzes were collecting Facebook information like names, birthdays, photos, and friend lists and displaying them in a JavaScript file …

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