Facebook owner Meta to pay biggest ever fine of its kind over data privacy

Facebook Meta FTC (Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Facebook owner Meta will pay the biggest ever fine over accusations it gave people access to personal information.

Meta has agreed to pay $725 million as part of a class action lawsuit, according to a court filing posted on Thursday. The settlement must still be approved by a judge in San Francisco.

The lawsuit accused Meta of allowing third parties to access people’s personal information. The long-running lawsuit began after 2018 accusations that Facebook had failed to protect people’s data from being given to Cambridge Analytica.

The complaint was filed on behalf of up to 280 million people, according to the court documents. That represents everyone who used Facebook in the US between 2007 and 2022, the filings claim.

It is not clear how any money will be shared and the case will be subject to further hearings next year.

Lawyers involved said that the fine was not only the biggest ever to be paid by Meta – which has faced a number of legal claims and financial penalties in recent years – but also the largest fine ever to be paid out in a US class-action lawsuit that related to data.

It is far from the biggest fine ever paid by the company, however. In 2019, Facebook paid a $5 billion fine to settle a case with the Federal Trade Commission, as part of another dispute over its privacy policies.

Meta did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement. But it said that settling the lawsuit was nonetheless “in the best interest of our community and shareholders”.

It also said that it had made significant changes to the way it handles users data over the past three years. It has “revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program”, it said in a statement.