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The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday ordered Twitter to pay a $150 million fine for alleged data privacy violations.
The government said Twitter agreed to pay the fine.
The Justice Department said Twitter collected people’s phone numbers and email addresses while claiming it was for security purposes, but later used that information to send targeted ads to users by companies.
“Twitter took data from users under the pretext of using it for security purposes, but later used the data to target users with ads,” FTC chief Lina Khan said in a statement. “This app has impacted more than 140 million Twitter users, while also increasing Twitter’s primary source of income.”
Twitter collected the data between May 2013 and September 2019.
In a complaint filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Twitter was also accused of failing to comply with data privacy rules established between the US and Europe.
US Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds said in a statement, “Social media companies that are dishonest with consumers will be held accountable for how their personal information is used.”
Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta said the $150 million fine underlined the seriousness of Twitter’s alleged misconduct and that new compliance measures would be enforced by Twitter as well.
According to the FTC, these measures include things like notifying users that Twitter is misusing account data, limiting employee access to people’s data, allowing people to use multi-factor authentication that doesn’t require Twitter to provide a person’s phone number, and bans on Twitter. . Twitter monetizes the data collected.
The government’s order is pending approval from a federal judge. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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