May 25, 2022

Twitter will pay $150 million in civil penalties and implement new compliance measures to settle allegations of FTC Act violations by misrepresenting how it would deploy users’ nonpublic contact information, affecting more than 140 million Twitter users. From 2013 to 2019, Twitter collected users’ telephone numbers and email addresses under the guise of account security protocols, while concealing their secondary use of this information to help companies send targeted ads to consumers, which thereby increased Twitter’s primary source of revenue. In addition to the monetary penalty, Twitter is required to implement a new privacy and information security program and comply with numerous other reporting and record-keeping requirements. DOJ, USAO NDCA

Tagged in: Cybersecurity and Data Breaches, Misrepresentations,