Federal Trade Commission may fine twitter and Twitter disclosed this information in a regulatory filing that it could face a fine of up to $250 million from US authorities over its use of phone numbers and email addresses to target advertisements.
The biggest social media company, Twitter, revealed itself in a regulatory report that it may face a fine between $150 million and $250 million. The reason behind this fine is misusing the user information like emails and phone numbers for targeted advertisements.
Twitter asked for personal information from users to make their accounts secure. But recently, FTC filed a complaint against Twitter that it had been using personal information to target advertisement.
It is clear that Twitter can access the phone numbers and emails of its users. There is no harm in it as far as the security of the users is concerned. On the other hand, using mobile numbers and contact details for targeted advertisement is a privacy breach which is against the US laws.
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This is the reason, twitter may face a fine of $250 million for misusing the information.
Federal Trade Commission has complained that Twitter has misused the information from 2013 to 2019.
Last October, Twitter has confessed his security flaw that it had shown targeted ads to its users without any intention. The users are asked to provide phone numbers and emails for two-factor authentication. This is right when the user’s experience is on stake. But twitter has misled this information.
On July 28, the Federal Trade Commission declined the comment by Twitter and complained that it had used the information allegedly for targeted advertisement.
Previously, Federal Trade Commission fined 5 billion dollars to Facebook for mishandling the user data for targeted advertisements. This was the biggest fine in the history of the FTC.
The complaint against twitter was filed after it had published its reported revenue of $683 million for the second quarter of 2020.
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