NEW YORK \u2014 The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook\u2019s privacy practices following a week of privacy scandals including allegations a Trump-affiliated political consulting firm got data inappropriately from millions of Facebook users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook\u2019s stock, which already took a big hit last week, plunged as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC\u2019s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the probe would include whether the company engaged in \u201cunfair acts\u201d that cause \u201csubstantial injury\u201d to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook\u2019s privacy practices have come under fire after revelations that Cambridge Analytica got data on Facebook users, including information on friends of people who had downloaded a psychological quiz app, even though those friends hadn\u2019t given explicit consent to sharing. Facebook is also facing questions over reports that it collected contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and information about text messages from Android users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook said in a statement Monday that the company remains \u201cstrongly committed\u201d to protecting people\u2019s information and that it welcomes the opportunity to answer the FTC\u2019s questions. News outlets reported on the FTC investigation last week, but the FTC hadn\u2019t confirmed it until Monday. Facebook reached a settlement with the FTC in 2011 offering privacy assurances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook said Sunday that this information is uploaded to secure servers and comes only from people who gave explicit consent to allow it. Officials say the data is not sold or shared with users\u2019 friends or outside apps. They say the data is used \u201cto improve people\u2019s experience across Facebook\u201d by helping to connect with others. But the company did not spell out exactly what it used the data for or why it needed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, believes Facebook was in violation of the 2011 settlement in letting Cambridge Analytica harvest data on friends of Facebook users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is what Facebook was doing 10 years ago that people objected to, what the FTC should have stopped in 2011,\u201d Rotenberg said. \u201cIt makes zero sense that when a person downloads their apps, they have the ability to transfer the data of their friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg talked about changes in 2014 that would have prevented this, Rotenberg said it should have been banned already under the 2011 consent decree. He said the FTC had dropped the ball in failing to enforce that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AP technology writer Anick Jesdanun contributed to this story.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook\u2019s privacy practices have come under fire after revelations that Cambridge Analytica got data on Facebook users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":40,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,31,33,9,40],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2807],"class_list":["post-13340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters","category-federal-oversight","category-watchdogs"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"PALSYFI42JH2HC5W3CGX5DBTZE","arc_canonical_url":"\/federal-oversight\/watchdogs\/2018\/03\/26\/ftc-is-investigating-facebook-over-privacy-practices\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n