Facebook will pay the sum of $9.5 million to as settlement to a Competition Bureau investigation which discovered that that the social media outfit made misleading claims about the level of control Canadians had over their personal information’s privacy.
The Competition Bureau said in a statement yesterday that Facebook gave a false impression that its privacy settings would allow users control those who could view and access their personal information.
The Bureau’s Commissioner, Mathew Bosswell said: “Canadians expect and deserve truth from businesses in the digital economy, and claims about privacy are no exception.
“The competition will not hesitate to crack down on any business that makes false or misleading claims to Canadians about how they use personal data, whether they are multinational corporations like Facebook or smaller companies.”
Following an thorough investigation, the bureau said it concluded that Facebook did not restrict some third-party developers in a manner that is consistent with the claims.
The Bureau said: “This personal information included content users posted on Facebook, messages users exchanged on Messenger, and other information about identifiable users.”
“Facebook also allowed certain third-party developers to access the personal information of users’ friends after users installed certain third-party applications.”
