Facebook to settle Cambridge Analytica data privacy lawsuit
- Facebook has however said its privacy practices are consistent with its disclosures and do not support any legal claims.
Facebook has agreed to settle a lawsuit in the San Francisco federal court seeking damages for letting third parties including Cambridge Analytica access the private data of users.
So far the financial terms have not been disclosed and the judge will put the class action on hold for 60 days until the lawyers for both plaintiffs and Facebook finalize a written settlement.
Facebook has however said its privacy practices are consistent with its disclosures and "do not support any legal claims".
The case sprang from 2018 revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a firm with ties to Trump political strategist Stephen Bannon, had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target US voters during the 2016 campaign that culminated in Trump's election as the 45th president.
The ensuring uproar led to a contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by lawmakers during a high-profile congressional hearing and spurred calls for people to delete their Facebook accounts. Even though Facebook's growth has stalled as more people connect and entertain themselves on rival services such as TikTok, the social network still boasts about 2 billion users worldwide, including nearly 200 million in the US and Canada.
The lawsuit, which had been seeking to be certified as a class action representing Facebook users, had asserted the privacy breach proved Facebook is a “data broker and surveillance firm", as well as a social network
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First Published:27 Aug 2022, 09:43 PM IST
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