The Australian privacy regulator has launched legal action against Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw millions of people’s profiles allegedly mined for information, reported CNBC.
The Australian Information Commissioner Angelene Falk lodged proceedings against Facebook in the country’s Federal Court on Monday, March 9, alleging “serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy in contravention of Australian privacy law,” according to an online release published Monday.
Facebook and consultancy Cambridge Analytica found themselves at the center of a scandal around the alleged harvesting and use of personal data in 2018, with concerns that such information could have been used to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit vote.
“We consider the design of the Facebook platform meant that users were unable to exercise reasonable choice and control about how their personal information was disclosed,” Falk stated..
The Australian regulator alleges that personal information from more than 300,000 Facebook profiles was given to an app on the site called “This Is Your Digital Life,” and risked being disclosed to Cambridge Analytica for political profiling, according to the release.
Full Content: CNBC
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