Twitter will pay a $150 million penalty and put in new safeguards to settle federal regulators' allegations that the social platform failed to protect the privacy of users' data over a six-year span.
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission announced the settlement on Wednesday with Twitter. The regulators allege that Twitter violated a 2011 FTC order by deceiving users about how well the company maintained and protected the privacy and security of their nonpublic contact information.
The government alleged that the violations occurred from May 2013 to September 2019.
“Twitter obtained data from users on the pretext of harnessing it for security purposes but then ended up also using the data to target users with ads,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “This practice affected more than 140 million Twitter users, while boosting Twitter’s primary source of revenue.”
