Facebook sued by D.C., over data breach accusations

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The attorney general for Washington, D.C., said on Wednesday the U.S. capital city had sued Facebook Inc for allegedly misleading users about how it safeguarded their personal data, in the latest fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The case joins several legal and regulatory proceedings that threaten to hit Facebook with significant penalties and increase its operating costs.

Authorities and consumer advocates have questioned whether Facebook's efforts on security, content moderation and cultural diversity have kept pace with the social responsibility it should have for its services, including WhatsApp and Instagram, which are essential communication tools for more than two billion people each month.

The world's largest social media company has drawn global scrutiny since disclosing earlier this year that a third-party personality quiz distributed on Facebook gathered profile information on 87 million users worldwide and sold the data to British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said Facebook misled users because it had known about the incident for two years before disclosing it. The company had told users it vetted third-party apps, yet made few checks, Racine said.

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg /VCG Photo

"This continues a year of bad publicity and significant issues for [Facebook], making it more likely that the U.S. government will take action to penalize and/or regulate” it, said financial analyst Scott Kessler of CFRA Research. “Yet, we still see its fundamentals as healthy and valuation as attractive."

Facebook shares suffered their biggest drop since July 26, closing down more than seven percent at 133.24 U.S. dollars on Wednesday, extending a roughly five-month stretch since the company warned that profit margins would erode in coming years because of consumer and government pressure to better guard data and suppress objectionable content.

"Facebook could have prevented third parties from misusing its consumers' data had it implemented and maintained reasonable oversight of third-party applications,” according to the lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

Facebook said in a statement, “We're reviewing the complaint and look forward to continuing our discussions with attorneys general in D.C. and elsewhere.”

The court could award unspecified damages and impose a civil penalty of up to 5,000 U.S. dollars per violation of the district's consumer protection law, or potentially close to 1.7 billion U.S. dollars, if penalized for each consumer affected as is typical. The lawsuit alleges the quiz software had data on 340,000 D.C. residents, though just 852 users had directly engaged with it.

Source(s): Reuters