By Pascal Oparada (Social Media/Tech Reporter)
Following a series of privacy violations by the social media giant, Facebook, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has imposed a $5 billion fine on the tech company.
The fine covers all of Facebook’s platforms including WhatsApp, Instagram and the eponymous Facebook itself.
The order was approved in a 3-2 vote by the agency’s commissioners, reports TechCrunch.
The Commission said it is the largest ever fine imposed on any company for violating consumer privacy.
Along with fine are stringent conditions Facebook must follow in order to stay in business. It will have to create a board committee on privacy and must provide executive assurance that consumers data is being respected.
Facebook must also conduct a privacy review of every new or modified product, service, or practice before it is implemented, and document its decisions about user privacy, per the order.
While the designated compliance officers must submit a quarterly privacy review report — sharing this with Facebook’s CEO and the independent assessor, as well as with the FTC upon its request.
The order also imposes security breach disclosure requirements on Facebook, which is required to document incidents when data of 500 or more users have been compromised, along with details of how it has sought to fix the problem — and provide that to the FTC and the assessor within 30 days of discovering the breach.
The FTC first confirmed that it was investigating Facebook in March of last year, during the then-new uproar surrounding Cambridge Analytica’s abuse of data siphoned from the network. The regulator was specifically concerned that Facebook had been systematically violating the terms of its 2012 agreement, which barred them from a number of practices concerning user data.
Rumours started less than a year later that the fine the Commission was considering would-be “record-setting,” though as many pointed out at the time, almost any conceivable amount would be easily written off by the company, which brings in upwards of $50 billion per year in revenue.