Facebook is to be brought to justice in Great Britain for “illegal” use of data

A campaign group said Thursday it has taken legal action against Facebook in the UK for allegedly “illegally using one million user data” by the US social network.

“Facebook you owe us,” said the case revolves around user data that Facebook was allowed to remove from the parent company of the now-defunct British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Critics claimed the information was used to influence voters in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.

“When we use Facebook, we expect our personal information to be used responsibly, transparently and legally,” said Alvin Carpio, a human rights activist who led the legal process.

“We rightly expect that … Facebook will not leave the door open so that third parties can misuse our data.

“By not protecting our personal information from misuse, we believe Facebook has broken the law. We will fight to hold Facebook accountable.”

The group action focuses on data collected from people using the Facebook hosted app “thisisyourdigitallife”.

It was found that the data of 87 million people worldwide was extracted from the app and used for political advertising.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined social media giant GBP 5.00,000 (around Rs.5 billion) for its role in the scandal last year.

“The ICO’s investigation found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook unfairly processed users’ personal information by allowing application developers to access their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent, and by allowing access even if users had not downloaded the app but merely “friends with people who had,” the report said.

However, the ICO reported earlier this month that it had found no evidence that Cambridge Analytica misused data to influence the Brexit referendum as far as it related to US users.

Facebook told AFP that it had not received any documents regarding the legal claim.

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