Facebook could face billions of dollars in FTC fine for privacy breach

Facebook is negotiating with the US Federal Trade Commission about fines and other sanctions for the privacy issues caused by the social network. The fine could be several billion dollars.

If Facebook and the FTC cannot agree on the details of the settlement, the FTC may go to court to enforce sanctions. That writes The Washington Post based on information from two sources familiar with the negotiations.

The FTC launched an investigation into Facebook’s practices in March last year, when it became known that Cambridge Analytica was able to use data from millions of users of the social network for political purposes. The FTC signed an agreement with Facebook in 2011, which pledged to protect user privacy.

The investigation launched by the FTC last year aims to examine whether that promise has been broken with the practices that have come to light. So far, the highest fine the FTC has imposed on a tech company for breaching an agreement is $22.5 million. That fine the authority handed out to Google.