Spanish watchdog slaps 1.2 million Euros fine to Facebook for sharing user data with advertisers

Spanish Data Protection Watchdog has slapped a fine of 1.2 million Euros against Facebook for failing to protect user data from being accessed by advertisers. Financial experts, however, say that the said fine is small in the context of the company which posted an advertising revenue of $9.2 billion in the 2Q of this year. 

Spanish Data Protection Agency alleges that the social media giant collects data based on the ideology, gender, religious beliefs, personal tastes or navigation which is a clear violation of privacy. And all this is being done without the knowledge of the users or their consent.

In May this year, France data protection agency slapped a fine of 150,000 Euros against Facebook for offering user data to advertisers. The fine was imposed after a two-year detailed investigation conducted up by the French Watchdog.

United States, Germany, Dutch, and Belgian governments are also getting ready to impose a fine on Facebook for the same reason soon.

A user group from India has already filed a case against Facebook in the Supreme court of India with the same intentions. The group wants Facebook to stop tracking its user’s web activity without their content and wants the social media giant to store the data of its Indian users in the same sub-continent.

Note from Cybersecurity Insiders- In general, all web services providers keep a track of their user’s web activity. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon already indulge in such activities which are evident from the ‘N’ number of reports published daily in various media resources.

The fact is that some companies disclose their user tracking abilities to the world. While some keep this activity concealed in their respective data centers.

Facebook also keeps a track of its users on what they are searching, posting and reviewing and then targets those users with relevant ad content.

For example, if a user posts a review on a product brought from Walmart. Then Facebook search engines analyze that content and will display product listings, prices, and reviews which are relevant to the review posted by the user.