The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is looking into Facebook’s recent data-privacy scandal, according to a source cited by Bloomberg.
Following reports this weekend that the firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge, the FTC is now investigating whether Facebook violated a 2011 settlement in which it agreed to get user consent before making certain types of changes to its privacy settings. If Facebook is in violation of that settlement, it could be subject to huge fines.
Facebook shares were down again today in early-morning trading, after a massive sell-off yesterday driven by the privacy scandal.
An FTC spokesman gave Fast Company the following comment: “We are aware of the issues that have been raised but cannot comment on whether we are investigating. We take any allegations of violations of our consent decrees very seriously as we did in 2012 in a privacy case involving Google.”
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