Australian data watchdog has dragged Facebook to court for allegedly sharing personal details of more than 300,000 people with the controversial, now defunct form Cambridge Analytica.
Australian Information Commissioner has given the social media a specified time frame to respond to its federal lawsuit and if Mark Zuckerberg’s led company fails to respond, there is a high probability of its services getting banned in the entire Australian continent.
Angelene Falk, the Information Commissioner for the region said that Facebook’s framework is as such its users cannot control or customize the features over-sharing personal information. So, the commissioner has specified in the statement that the lawsuit could make the American tech giant pay a penalty of AUD $1.7 million or AUD $529 billion if the federal court pronounces the statement to benefit 311,127 instances; failing which the services will be banned in the entire region.
Note 1- In July 2019, the US federal trade commission imposed a $5 billion penalty on Facebook as it was proved before a court that the social networking platform shared details of more than 87 million of American users as a part of the “ It is your digital life” program hosted by British Political research firm Cambridge Analytica.
Note 2- After an investigation which lasted for 6 months, the Australian watchdog has discovered that the personal info of its populace was also harvested by the UK based firm and so has now decided to drag FB to court
