Twitter has been fined 150million Dollars after law enforcement officials accused the company of illegally using its users’ data to help sell targeted advertisements to customers within their network.
The Department of Justice say Twitter violated an agreement it had with regulators which court documents showed after it had vowed to never give any personal information like phone numbers, email addresses to advertisers.
“Federal Trade Commission charges Twitter with deceptively using account security data to sell targeted ads. The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Civil order Twitter as a company to pay $150 million penalty for violating 2011 FTC order and cease profiting from deceptively collected data,” said The Federal Trade Commission in a public statement.
More than 140 million Twitter users including Kenyans provided their phone numbers and email addresses after the company told them this information would only help secure their accounts, according to the complaint. Twitter, however, failed to mention that this information would be used for targeted advertising.
“Twitter used the phone numbers and email addresses to allow advertisers to target specific ads to specific consumers by matching the information with data they already had or obtained from data brokers,” alleged the Federal Trade Commission.
This news comes just a few weeks after twitter announced a deal on the table that is reported to include a change in ownership which apparently involved the CEO of Tesla Industries Elon Musk.
“I wonder if these allegations will stop Elon Musks plans to buy Twitter. If not I hope he succeeds in changing such decrees,” reacted a Kenyan on twitter.
