Twitter has agreed for paying 150 million dollars as a part of settlement with the regulators over the allegations that, the company has misrepresented the security and privacy of the user data over several years. The Department of Justice and FTC said that, between May 2013 and September 2019, the company has asked its users for personal information for securing their accounts but then used the information for targeting the users with ads or advertisements.
The penalty, which was announced has been a couple of years in the making, the company ‘Twitter’ has warned the investors in August 2020 that it had been facing an FTC probe and potentially a fine of over a hundred million dollars for both violating 2011 settlement and FTC Act again.
According to a complaint filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of FTC, particularly as Twitter represented to the users that the company has collected their telephone numbers and email addresses for the purpose of securing the accounts, and the company has failed for disclosing that, it has also used the contact information of the users for aiding the advertisers in reaching the preferred audiences.
Lina Khan, head of FTC said, this practice has affected over 140 million users of Twitter along with the boosting the primary source of revenue of Twitter, and the agreement is also requiring Twitter for improving its compliance practices and the company has not responded immediately for making any comment.
