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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
- Facebook will pay $100 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission for making "misleading disclosures" of its data being misused in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
- Federal regulators announced the settlement Wednesday, the same day Facebook was also hit with a $5 billion penalty from the Federal Trade Commission and a lawsuit from the Department of Justice.
- The SEC alleges that Facebook knew back in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had collected personal information on up to 87 million users, but didn't disclose the breach until March 2018.
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Facebook has agreed to pay $100 million to federal regulators for making "misleading disclosures" about its data being misused in the years after it knew that Cambridge Analytica had gotten ahold of user data.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday it had settled with the tech giant for $100 million. The fine comes hand-in-hand with the Federal Trade Commission's "unprecedented" $5 billion penalty served to Facebook over its handling of user data following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
"For more than two years, Facebook's public disclosures presented the risk of misuse of user data as merely hypothetical when Facebook knew that a third-party developer had actually misused Facebook user data," the SEC said in its press release.
The SEC alleges that Facebook knew back in 2015 that data analytics company Cambridge Analytica had collected personal information on up to 87 million users, but didn't disclose the breach for more than two years after the fact. News of Cambridge Analytica's actions didn't hit the media and the public until a whistleblower disclosed the incident in March 2018.
Instead of warning investors that user data was misused, Facebook relied on hypotheticals, stating that "users' data may be improperly accessed, used or disclosed," the SEC alleges.
Facebook will pay the $100 million fine "without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations."
In addition to the SEC's $100 million fine and FTC's $5 billion penalty, the US government also sued Facebook on Wednesday "to hold Facebook accountable for its failure to protect consumers' privacy."