FTC Officially Investigating Facebook

By Syndicated Investigative Reporter Michael Webster

FTC officially opened an investigation into Facebook following the company’s recent Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. It was known last week that the FTC had reached out to Facebook and was planning to send the company a list of questions about the Cambridge Analytica situation, but the agency never confirmed that Facebook was under official investigation until now.

At some point we will see almost all businesses impacted by various “negative” aspects of the internet; data mining, heuristics, the breach of personal protected information, online bullying, violations of rights of protected classes and so forth. But this scenario with FaceBook is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. As “voice” is becoming somewhat ubiquitous in the form of Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant (among others), we discover that we are being heard all the time, and advances in AI allow for meaning to accompany what we say. Whether it’s a government agency checking in to see if we’re part of a terrorist cell or simply Amazon trying to determine the next best item to pop up, the point is that we are inviting these ears and eyes into our homes and businesses. Consider that as we march forward to the year 2022, we will see super high speed communications in the form of 5G combine with 2nm manufacturing, AR and VR will spring to maturity, and IOT and wearables will also come of age. As we move forward it becomes highly I,portent to understand our online position, have in place reputation management programs, make sure we have full ownership/ licensing for all of our assets. The cost of doing business has gone up; we must have more specialized people and tools supporting our compliance. And in many cases, our greatest opportunities will be leveraging the mistakes that are made by our competition, often through very small windows of opportunity.

Facebook has had issues with the FTC in the past. The decree that it signed promising stronger privacy practices.“Companies who have settled previous FTC actions must also comply with FTC order provisions imposing privacy and data security requirements,” the agency wrote in a press release. “Accordingly, the FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices.”A Facebook spokesperson pointed Recode to a statement the company issued last week from Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman: “We remain strongly committed to protecting people’s information. We appreciate the opportunity to answer questions the FTC may have.”The spokesperson did not answer a question about whether or not the FTC had already sent Facebook questions on the matter.Even though it was basically known that the FTC was looking into Facebook last week, investors still found the agency’s confirmation troubling. Facebook stock was down as much as 6 percent in early morning trading.

According to DT Daily, after a week of bad news for both Facebook and its users, the social network’s data collection scandal doesn’t seem to be going away quietly. Facebook is denying that it collects call and text data from users… at least without their permission. Over the weekend, some Facebook archives were found to contain this call and text data from connected Android smartphones. It wasn’t very difficult to find this out either. Users downloaded their Facebook data records and discovered entire call and SMS records in the data dump.

If these scandals have looking to take control of your Facebook data, Take a look at our guides that show you how to boost your Facebook privacy, or even delete your account permanently.