Twitter will pay a $150 million fine for violating user data privacy

Twitter will pay a $150 million fine and implement new measures to satisfy federal regulators’ charges that the social platform failed to protect users’ data privacy during a six-year period.

 On Wednesday, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Twitter. Twitter is accused of violating a 2011 FTC ruling by misleading users about how well it maintained and protected the privacy and security of their nonpublic contact information, according to the authorities.

From May 2013 to September 2019, Twitter informed users that their phone numbers and email addresses were being collected for account security purposes. However, it failed to disclose that it would also utilise the information to enable corporations to send targeted web adverts to platform users, according to the authorities.

In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday, the regulators also said that Twitter fraudulently stated that it complied with U.S. privacy accords with the European Union and Switzerland, which prevent corporations from processing user information in ways that contradict the reasons approved by users.

 “Twitter obtained data from users on the pretext of harnessing it for security purposes but then ended up also using the data to target users with ads,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “This practice affected more than 140 million Twitter users, while boosting Twitter’s primary source of revenue.”

The San Francisco-based corporation has over 229 million users worldwide.

The settlement’s $150 million penalty and new compliance measures must be approved by a federal court in California.

According to the FTC’s 2011 decision, major flaws in Twitter’s data security allowed hackers to gain unlawful administrative control of the platform, including access to nonpublic user information.

 “Keeping data secure and respecting privacy is something we take extremely seriously, and we have cooperated with the FTC every step of the way,” Damien Kieran, Twitter’s chief privacy officer, stated in a blog post on Wednesday. He stated that the company has updated operations and made other modifications in accordance with the FTC “to ensure that people’s personal data remains secure and their privacy protected.”

Twitter announced the launch of a new data governance committee within the firm in November.

The settlement was announced on the day of Twitter’s annual shareholders meeting. For weeks, the controversy surrounding Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion takeover of Twitter has circled around the firm. Musk, one of Twitter’s top owners, altered the funding strategy for his proposed takeover on Wednesday, bolstering investor confidence that the deal may still go through.

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