TheCable

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), UK’s data protection watchdog has placed a £500,000 fine on Facebook for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In a statement released on Thursday, the agency said the fine is the maximum allowed under its 1998 data protection rules and would have been higher under the European Union’s GDPR.

“Between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent, and allowing access even if users had not downloaded the app, but were simply ‘friends’ with people who had,” Elizabeth Denham, the UK Information Commissioner, said in a statement released on Thursday.

“Facebook also failed to keep the personal information secure because it failed to make suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform.

“The fine would inevitably have been significantly higher under the GDPR.”

Responding to the fine, Facebook said it acknowledged that it should have taken action in 2015.

“While we respectfully disagree with some of their findings, we have said before that we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and taken action in 2015.”

In 2014, a researcher and his team used a quiz to harvest the data of 87 million Facebook users. Some of the data were shared with Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly used the data to psychologically profile voters in the United States.