Twitter to pay $150M penalty over privacy of users’ data

Twitter pays a $150 million penalty and put in new safeguards to settle federal regulators’ allegations that the social platform failed to guard the privateness of customers’ information over a six-year span.

The Justice Division and the Federal Commerce Fee introduced the settlement with Twitter on Wednesday. The regulators allege Twitter violated a 2011 FTC order by deceiving customers about how nicely it maintained and guarded the privateness and safety of their nonpublic contact info.

From Might 2013 to September 2019, Twitter instructed customers that it was accumulating their telephone numbers and e-mail addresses for functions of account safety. Nevertheless it didn’t disclose that it additionally would use the knowledge to allow firms to ship focused on-line advertisements to customers on the platform, the federal government alleged.

The regulators additionally alleged, in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday, that Twitter falsely claimed that it complied with U.S. privateness agreements with the European Union and Switzerland, which prohibit firms from processing consumer info in methods which are at odds with functions approved by customers.

“Twitter obtained information from customers on the pretext of harnessing it for safety functions however then ended up additionally utilizing the info to focus on customers with advertisements,” FTC Chair Lina Khan stated in an announcement. “This observe affected greater than 140 million Twitter customers, whereas boosting Twitter’s main income.”

The San Francisco-based firm has greater than 229 million customers world wide.

The $150 million penalty and the required new compliance measures beneath the settlement have to be authorized by a federal court docket in California.

The FTC’s 2011 order had alleged severe lapses in Twitter’s information safety that allowed hackers to realize unauthorized administrative management of Twitter, together with entry to nonpublic consumer info.

“Maintaining information safe and respecting privateness is one thing we take extraordinarily severely, and we’ve cooperated with the FTC each step of the way in which,” Twitter’s chief privateness officer, Damien Kieran, stated in a weblog post-Wednesday. He stated the corporate has taken steps in accord with the FTC on updating operations and making different enhancements “to make sure that individuals’s private information stays safe, and their privateness protected.”

Twitter introduced in November the formation of a brand new information governance committee inside the firm.

Phrase of the settlement got here on the day of Twitter’s annual shareholders’ assembly. The drama of Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion buy of Twitter has swirled across the firm for weeks. Mr. Musk, who’s one in every of Twitter’s largest shareholders, on Wednesday revised the financing plan for his proposed takeover, elevating investor hopes that he nonetheless intends to tug off the deal.

Twitter yields unequalled affect on information, politics, and society because of its public nature, easy interface, and of-the-moment immediacy. Some specialists worry that Mr. Musk would chill out content-moderation guidelines that provide some safety in opposition to white supremacy, hate speech and threats of violence. The platform famously banned former President Donald Trump following the assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

• Twitter pays a $150 million penalty and put in new safeguards to settle federal regulators’ allegations that the social platform failed to guard the privateness of customers’ information
• From Might 2013 to September 2019, Twitter instructed customers that it was accumulating their telephone numbers and e-mail addresses for functions of account safety.
• The $150 million penalty and the required new compliance measures beneath the settlement have to be authorized by a federal court docket in California.