Social media giant, Facebook Inc., has been witnessing a never-ending deluge of privacy and security related scandals over the past few years. Recently, the company made headlines when Canada’s Competition Bureau has fined the social media giant USD 9 million for making misleading or false claims regarding the privacy of Canadians’ personal information on Messenger and Facebook.
According to sources, Facebook has also been ordered to pay an extra USD 500,000 for the agency’s investigation costs. This fine is part of the settlement agreement Facebook reached with the Calif.-based Company, Menlo Park.
Under this agreement, Facebook agreed to not make misleading or false representations about the disclosure of private and personal information. The agreement, which binding on Facebook for ten years, includes representations about the extent to which Facebook users can control access to their private information on Messenger and Facebook.
Facebook has six months to come in accordance with Canadian law. The company gets revenue from targeting Facebook users with advertising based on the information they provide.
The Canadian competition bureau concluded after investigating Facebook’s practices between Aug. 2012 and Jun. 2018.
Commenting on the matter, Matthew Boswell, Commissioner of Competition said that Canadian people deserve and expect truth from businesses in the digital economy and claims regarding privacy policies are no exception.
Mr. Boswell added that the Canadian Competition Bureau would not hesitate to crack down on any digital business that makes misleading and false claims to Canadian people regarding how they use their personal data, be it smaller or multinational companies like Facebook.
The Facebook spokesperson said the e-mail statement that the company would build on the improvements it has made in safeguarding people's information and how it communicates about the privacy controls Canadian people can use.
Source Credit - https://www.squamishchief.com/facebook-fined-9-million-for-misleading-users-1.24138375