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At least one million Facebook users in the United Kingdom are taking part in a new class action lawsuit against the social media company, alleging personal data remains unprotected from outside apps.
Filed in London’s High Court Tuesday, lead plaintiff and journalist Peter Jukes alleges Facebook allowed a third-party to secretly scrape private data from user accounts and networks without their permission.
This will be the second such legal action against Facebook in the U.K. relating to the Cambridge Analytica scandal starting in 2018.
Facebook agreed to pay £500,000 in Oct. 2019 after an investigation found these third-party apps had free reign over personal data within Facebook’s system, the Evening Express reports.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) held an extensive investigation into claims Facebook was allowing personal data to be used for political purposes at the time.
The investigation revealed that between 2007 and 2014, app developers were able to access account details without users ever knowing, according to Reuters.
One of the third-party apps that received the most attention at the time was Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm linked to former United States President Donald Trump.
Following the news, Facebook publicly apologized and created a system for users to check to see if these apps had siphoned any private data, according to the BBC.
The ICO eventually found no evidence that U.K. Facebook user data was used by Cambridge Analytica, according to the Evening Express.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of members of the U.S. Congress regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal that same year in 2018.
Facebook settled the following year with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for $5 billion in penalties surrounding Cambridge Analytica and third-party access to data, Bloomberg reports.
Jukes says an app known as “This is Your Digital Life” was harvesting not only personal details from individual accounts, but also from the friends those accounts were linked to.
The legal action is seeking to represent U.K. Facebook users who were also friends with someone who used the app before May 2015, according to Reuters.
“The Information Commissioner’s Office investigation into these issues, which included seizing and interrogating Cambridge Analytica’s servers, found no evidence that any UK or EU users’ data was transferred,” Facebook reportedly said in a statement.
Jukes joins another lawsuit in the U.K. against Facebook that began last year.
A group known as “Facebook You Owe Us” argues that the social media behemoth violates the 1998 Data Protection Act, according to the BBC.
“Cases like Facebook You Owe Us … provide consumers with an essential route to redress,” James Oldnall, managing partner at Milberg London, a law firm representing Facebook You Owe Us, told Bloomberg.
“The courts are beginning to recognize that personal data has value, and that representative actions are a suitable mechanism to hold companies to account for abusing or misusing that data.”
What do you think of this lawsuit against Facebook? Has its data sharing practices made you think twice about logging into your account? Let us know why or why not in the comments below.
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One thought on Facebook Faces New Mass Legal Action Over Data Sharing
My data was exposed also I wanna sue and also walmart