Details of the FTC privacy investigation into Facebook are leaking to the press.
Topline: Unnamed Facebook officials are sharing concerns with the Wall Street Journal about potentially harmful emails from 2012 that have surfaced and could link CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly with the type of data-sharing practices that have earned the company scorn, not to mention a federal investigation.
- The internal emails were discovered by federal investigators as part of an ongoing Federal Trade Commission probe into the company’s privacy practices.
- The investigation was started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, wherein an outside researcher gave the Trump-linked data firm user data he collected from a third-party Facebook app.
- Facebook has been operating under an FTC consent decree regarding privacy since 2012. It is unclear if Zuckerberg violated that decree, because the conversation in question happened before the order officially went into effect, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A Facebook spokesperson told Forbes, “We have fully cooperated with the FTC’s investigation to date and provided tens of thousands of documents, emails and files. At no point did Mark or any other Facebook employee knowingly violate the company’s obligations under the FTC consent order nor do any emails exist that indicate they did."
What did Zuckerberg know, and when did he know it? The email exchange regulators are focusing on occurred in April 2012. According to the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg asked an employee if the company should stop developers who said they could collect user data and display it on their own website, regardless of user privacy settings.
Another employee responded, saying that such an expansive collection of user data was possible and that many developers do the same thing. The app was eventually suspended, but the email exchange continued without anyone suggesting the company address the larger issue, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It is unclear when the app was suspended.
What’s next? Facebook could settle with the FTC and pay a fine, or go to court for potentially violating the FTC order. But executives are worried a trial would make even more embarrassing emails public, and want to settle, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Read the full Wall Street Journal story here.
