Published 18:38 IST, January 18th 2020
Facebook ordered by Massachusetts judge to disclose app records
A Massachusetts judge ordered social media giant Facebook to hand over concerned material on misuse of user data to the state's attorney general, Maura Healey.
A Massachusetts judge has ordered social media giant Facebook to hand over concerned material on misuse of the user data to the state's attorney general. According to reports, the material contains information about thousands of applications that Facebook suspects may have misused data of a user.
The decision was given by Justice Brian Davis on January 17 as state's attorney general Maura Healey continues to investigate Facebook's privacy practices. According to reports, Healey had started her investigation in the year 2018 after news broke out that the Mark Zuckerberg-led company had allowed Cambridge Analytica to access data of 87 million users.
Only Facebook knew about the developers' identities
Justice Davis said that only Facebook was aware of the names of the people and applications as the identities were protected by an attorney-client privilege. He further added that the privilege did not leave any for the Attorney General to obtain the information that she required.
State attorney general Maura Healey was happy with Davis's decision and said that Facebook told its users that their information is safe without any evidence to back up their claim is something that the authorities investigating the matter will not accept. She further added that she was happy with the court telling Facebook to reveal information about with app developers may have misused users' data.
In its response, Facebook said that it was disappointed that the authorities did not completely consider their arguments based on law, including the doctrine based on work product. According to reports, the company had suspended 69,000 applications after their respective developers failed to cooperate. Almost 10,000 applications may have misused users' data.
Facebook slapped with a hefty fine
The Ministry of Justice in Brazil slapped the US tech giant Facebook Inc with a hefty charge of 6.6 million reais ($1.6 million) for improperly sharing user data with apps. This came after the ministry clarified that their consumer protection department had found that data from 443,000 Facebook users was shared with an app called "thisisyourdigitallife". The ministry in a statement asserted that the data was being shared for "questionable" purposes.
Facebook in an email response to the ministry said that they were evaluating its legal options regarding the case.
The company said, "We are focused on protecting people's privacy". They also asserted that they had made appropriate changes that restricted the accessibility of "the information with the App developers".
Updated 18:38 IST, January 18th 2020