On April 23, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the settlement reached last July for sanctions brought by the FTC against Facebook for privacy violations that have spanned nearly eight years. Judge Timothy Kelly upheld the largest penalty ever won by the FTC, but the settlement also requires Facebook to take additional measures to protect users’ personal information. The opinion lists 11 different remedial steps Facebook must take, including “clearly disclosing” any time it shares personal information with third parties and obtaining express consent, ceasing “a host of” misrepresentations about its collection and use of users’ personal information, and creating a committee, independent of Facebook’s board of directors to oversee the implementation of the new privacy efforts. Read more here.
Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.