European regulators join forces to investigate social media data misuse

In the coming years, European regulators will jointly investigate the misuse of user data on social media. Regulators believe Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of Facebook data is the tip of the iceberg.

The regulators are creating a working group to detect and punish this kind of abuse, reports WP29, the association of privacy watchdogs in Europe. With the working group, the government authorities want to keep attention in the long term for the misuse of personal data originating from social media.

The European regulators don’t think Facebook’s ‘sorry’ is enough, which is why the authorities want to look broader and longer. While the WP29 suspects that there are many more cases of user data misuse besides the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the partnership does not name concrete companies involved or social media where that happened. It does say that developers and data traders may have been involved.

The working group will continue to exist as WP29 when it merges into the new European Data Protection Board from 25 May. This EDPB must enforce the rules of the General Data Protection Regulation, also known by the English abbreviation gdpr, in practice.