Facebook to pay $9 million to Competition Bureau after investigation

Facebook Inc. must pay a $9 million penalty to the Competition Bureau after making "false or misleading claims" about the privacy of personal information on the main Facebook platform and its Messenger app, according to a Tuesday release from the Competition Bureau. The social media giant will also pay $500,000 to the bureau for the cost of the investigation, which took place between 2012 and 2018. The investigation found that despite telling users they could control who had access to their personal information through the Facebook platform, the company did not limit the sharing of data with third parties. "This personal information included content users posted on Facebook, messages users exchanged on Messenger, and other information about identifiable users," according to the bureau's release. The bureau also determined that Facebook allowed third party developers to access personal data of users and the "friends" of users after the installation of specific apps until 2018, some three years after the company said it had stopped the practice. "The Competition Bureau will not hesitate to crack down on any business that makes false or misleading claims to Canadians about how they use personal data, whether they are multinational corporations like Facebook or smaller companies,” Competition Bureau commissioner Matthew Boswell said in a statement. A year ago, Facebook's Kevin Chan told a panel of international lawmakers at a specially convened hearing in Ottawa that he thought matters of privacy and competition should be kept separate. “I suspect that data protection authorities around the world would have a very different view about whether it is appropriate to pour in concepts from other realms into data protection law,” Chan said in response to a question from Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. The Competition Bureau is not the only federal agency to point to Facebook's privacy practices. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is currently in the early stages of a federal lawsuit against Facebook to get the California-based company to comply with what the OPC says are the company's obligations under Canadian privacy law. Last month, Facebook requested that Federal Court throw out the OPC's report.

Facebook to pay $9 million to Competition Bureau after investigation

Brief | May 19, 2020

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Facebook to pay $9 million to Competition Bureau after investigation

Brief | May 19, 2020

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