Meta faces $40 bn data privacy penalty

A New Mexico jury found the Facebook parent company liable for willfully deceiving users about its protections Meta Platforms is facing between $35 billion and $40 billion in civil penalties from the US state of New Mexico, Reuters has reported. At the upper end, the fine would rank as the largest financial penalty ever imposed on a US corporation.The case stems from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, which erupted after a whistleblower revealed that the British political consulting firm had obtained data from tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent through a third-party app.The data was used to profile voters and target them with political messaging, including during Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign. Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy months later, while Facebook faced billions of dollars in fines and compensation claims over its handling of user data.It comes a week after a jury found the Facebook parent company liable for misleading statements about the privacy of users’ data.The jury in Santa Fe found that Meta had willfully deceived consumers, resulting in more than 43 million breaches of the state’s consumer protection law. The vi...