Twitter Inc has agreed to pay $150 million to settle allegations it misused personal data, like telephone numbers, to focus on promoting after telling customers the knowledge can be used for safety causes, in accordance with court docket paperwork filed on Wednesday.
Twitter’s settlement covers allegations that it misrepresented the “security and privacy” of consumer information between May 2013 and September 2019, in accordance with the court docket paperwork.
The firm can pay $150 million as a part of the settlement introduced by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In addition to the financial settlement, the settlement requires Twitter to enhance its compliance practices.
The grievance mentioned that the misrepresentations violated the FTC Act and a 2011 settlement with the company.”Specifically, whereas Twitter represented to customers that it collected their phone numbers and e-mail addresses to safe their accounts, Twitter didn’t disclose that it additionally used consumer contact data to assist advertisers in reaching their most well-liked audiences,” the grievance mentioned.
Twitter’s chief privateness officer, Damien Kieran, mentioned in a press release that with the settlement “we have aligned with the agency on operational updates and program enhancements” to guard consumer privateness and safety.
Twitter is a free service that makes cash primarily by way of promoting. Billionaire Elon Musk, who’s shopping for the service for $44 billion, has criticized its ads-driven enterprise mannequin and pledged to diversify its income sources.”If Twitter was not truthful right here, what else shouldn’t be true? This could be very regarding information,” Musk mentioned in a tweet late on Wednesday, commenting on the social media firm’s advert practices and the high-quality.
U.S. officers identified that of the $3.4 billion in income that Twitter earned in 2019, about $3 billion was from promoting.
The firm made $5 billion in income for 2021. It mentioned in a submitting earlier this month that it had put apart $150 million after agreeing “in principle” upon a penalty with the FTC.
“Twitter obtained data from users on the pretext of harnessing it for security purposes but then ended up also using the data to target users with ads,” mentioned FTC Chair Lina Khan in a press release. “This practice affected more than 140 million Twitter users, while boosting Twitter’s primary source of revenue.”The grievance additionally alleges that Twitter falsely mentioned it complied with the European Union-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks, which bar corporations from utilizing information in ways in which shoppers don’t authorize.
Twitter’s settlement follows years of fallout over the privateness practices of tech corporations.
Revelations in 2018 that Facebook, the world’s greatest social community, was utilizing telephone numbers offered for two-factor authentication to serve adverts enraged privateness advocates.
Facebook, now known as Meta, equally settled with the FTC over the problem as a part of a $5 billion settlement reached in 2019.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; Additional reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Bill Berkrot and Bernard Orr)
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Source: www.financialexpress.com”