UK Watchdog Fines Facebook For Cambridge Analytica Incident

The fallout from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica debacle in early 2018 continued this week. The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office announced Thursday it would levy a fine against Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant for its failure to protect user data from being harvested by Cambridge Analytica, in a press release on the ICO’s website.

The fine amounts to 500,000 pounds, or roughly $660,000 USD. That is the maximum allowable fine under the Data Protection Act 1998. The ICO could not issue a larger fine under the new General Data Protection Regulation because of the timing of “certain incidents,” the organization said.

Thursday’s announcement was a follow-up to a preliminary fine announcement the ICO made in July.

The ICO conducted an investigation and concluded that Facebook allowed app developers too much data access without explicit consent on the part of users. The personal information of 87 million people was scraped by an app called “This Is Your Digital Life,” which Cambridge Analytica used in its election consulting business.

The fine will not make a dent in Facebook’s financials as the firm reported nearly $40 billion in annual revenue in 2017. However, the ICO said the fine will try to draw attention to how data impacts elections.

“One of our main motivations for taking action in this case is to drive meaningful change in the way organizations process our personal data. This action is part of our wider investigation into the way personal information is used during political campaigning,” Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a video statement. “There are still wider, broader conversations to be had about the intersections between technology and democracy, and we will be reporting further in the coming weeks.”

Facebook recently came under the data spotlight again after self-reporting a massive data breach at the end of September. The attack affected nearly 30 million users. That led to dissatisfaction from some shareholders, as well as an order from the Japanese government to improve data security.