Twitter will pay a $150 million fine to settle privacy lawsuits with the U.S. Department of justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Previously, twitter was accused of fraudulently using users' e-mail addresses and phone numbers to place targeted advertisements. In addition to fines, twitter must also accept audits and other restrictions on its data privacy plan.
The lawsuit claims that Twitter misrepresented its policies to users between 2013 and 2019, in violation of both the Federal Trade Commission Act and the order of a settlement agreement in 2011. Twitter encourages users to add phone numbers or email addresses to enable security measures such as dual authentication. But in fact, twitter also incorporated this information into advertising positioning data. Twitter apologized for this in 2019.
"The $150 million fine reflects the seriousness of the charges against twitter. According to the settlement proposed today, many new compliance measures will be implemented, which will help prevent more misleading strategies that threaten users' privacy," vanita Gupta, assistant secretary of justice, said in a statement. In 2019, FTC also sued Facebook for similar practices and imposed a fine of $5 billion.