Image Courtesy; The Economic Times
Meta platform has agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a lawsuit wherein the platform is accused of allowing third parties to access the personal information of users. The filing which also includes Cambridge Analytica was filed on Thursday.
In 2018 Facebook was accused of allowing the British political consulting firm to access the data of 87 million users. Reportedly, this is the highest settlement agreement is the largest Meta has ever paid to resolve a class action lawsuit. This is also the largest data privacy class action in the US data privacy class action.
Meta however has not admitted its wrongdoing in the settlement. The settlement is still subject to the approval of a federal judge, in San Franciso. Meta has said in its filing that the settling is in the interest of its community and shareholders. Meta also claimed that it has revamped its approach to privacy in the past three years.
Cambridge Analytica is accused of using the Facebook user information of millions of American users to help Trump win the elections. As the news became of the scam became public Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL.
The Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was called to Congress for questioning, as it became a classic case of data piracy. Cambridge Analytica shut its office in May last year. The data privacy case gave rise to many apprehensions regarding the misuse of data.
Previously in 2019, Facebook settled another Federal Trade Commission probe by paying 100 million dollars for claims that it misled investors about the use of users’ data.
