FTC confirms non public investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices

Rank 5 | Mark Zuckerberg | Net worth: $78.7 billion | He is the founder of the social media platform, Facebook . (Image: Reuters)

The American consumer protection agency on Monday confirmed that it is conducting "an open non-public investigation" into Facebook’s acts against consumers’ privacy, as reported by the media.

"The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises, including to comply with Privacy Shield, or that engage in unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers in violation of the FTC Act," said Tom Pahl, Acting Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

The Privacy Shield refers to the EU-US and Swiss-US frameworks, which were designed by the US Department of Commerce, the European Commission, and Swiss Administration to provide companies on both sides of the Atlantic with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States. The move was in support of transatlantic commerce.

"Companies who have settled previous FTC actions must also comply with FTC order provisions imposing privacy and data security requirements. Accordingly, the FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices," the FTC added in its statement.

The ongoing case against Facebook centres around the data analytics from  Cambridge Analytica, which according to a joint investigation by The New York Times and Britain's Observer, was able to create psychological profiles using data from 50 million Facebook users through the use of a personality prediction app.

The idea was to be able to target individual US voters by predicting their behaviour.