Meta may face further restrictions on the purposes for which it uses your data, after the US Federal Trade Commission proposed barring the company from profiting from information it collects from users under the age of eighteen. Meta, which changed its name from Facebook in late 2021, still runs that social network, along with Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp.
“Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” Samuel Levine, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Consumer Protection, said in a statement Wednesday. The FTC said Facebook failed to fully comply with a privacy order from 2020 that paid the company a $5 billion fine.
An independent evaluator found that Facebook violated the 2012 and 2020 privacy orders by “continuing to give app developers access to users’ private information” through mid-2020, the FTC said. The agency also alleges that Facebook allowed children to use its Messenger Kids app to communicate with unapproved contacts via group chats and group video calls between late 2017 and mid-2019, despite telling parents they could control who their children could contact.
“The company’s recklessness puts young users at risk, and Facebook needs to respond to its failures,” Levine added.
The FTC has proposed the following changes to its 2020 privacy order, which will apply to the Meta services Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, as well as to the VR Oculus effort:
- Prohibit the monetization of any data collected on users under the age of 18.
- Pause when new features, products and services are launched without the assessor’s written consent that there are no gaps or weaknesses in compliance with the 2020 Privacy Order.
- A requirement to ensure that any company that acquires or merges with Meta also complies with the Privacy Order.
- The requirement to disclose any future uses of facial recognition and to obtain users’ permission in this area.
- Promote Meta privacy reviews, third party monitoring, data inventory and access controls and employee privacy training.
Head of Meta Communications Andy Stone described the FTC’s announcement as “political stunt. “
“Despite three years of continued engagement with the FTC on our agreement, it has provided no opportunity to discuss this completely unprecedented new theory,” Stone wrote on Twitter. “We have spent tremendous resources building and implementing an industry-leading privacy program under the terms of our FTC agreement. We will fight this measure vigorously and expect it to prevail.”
Stone also referred to the privacy practices of Chinese social media app TikTok, which he said is allowed to “operate without restrictions on US soil.” However, TikTok has faced Congress over concerns that it does not protect data collected from the millions of Americans who use the video app, which has been described as a national security threat.
TikTok is facing a potential ban amid concerns that US user data has been passed on to the Chinese government, or that the Chinese government could influence public opinion in the US by dictating what content is shown to US TikTok users.
Thanks to another Meta privacy case, if you used Facebook between May 24, 2007 and December 22, 2022, you may be eligible for part of the $725 million settlement that Meta is paying. It follows a class-action lawsuit that accused Facebook of improperly sharing users’ personal information with outside organisations, including Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm with ties to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
here How to file your claim for part of the money.