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FaceApp Privacy Panic, Facebook’s 5 Billion Dollar Fine, Amazon Brushing Scams
This is your Shared Security Weekly Blaze for July 22nd 2019 with your host, Tom Eston. In this week’s episode: The FaceApp privacy panic, Facebook’s 5 billion dollar fine from the FTC, and what you need to know about two new types of Amazon scams.
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Hi everyone, welcome to the Shared Security Weekly Blaze where we update you on the top 3 cybersecurity and privacy topics from the week. These podcasts are published every Monday and are 15 minutes or less quickly giving you “news that you can use”.
The Federal Trade Commission has approved a 5 billion dollar settlement with Facebook over its investigation into their handling of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal which exposed the private information of 87 million users. According to the Wall Street Journal, the settlement also allows the FTC to have more oversight and restrictions on Facebook’s privacy practices. While 5 billion dollars seems like a lot, it’s really just a drop in the bucket for a company like Facebook. In fact, when the news hit last week about the FTC settlement, Facebook’s stock shares went up 1.8%. So let’s run the numbers, Facebook made $15.1 billion just in Q1 of this year and $5 billion is only about 9% of their total revenue for 2018 which came in at $55.83 billion. Again, this is not that big of a deal for Facebook when we’re talking about billions and billions in revenue.
Now we do have to keep in mind this is the largest fine ever issued by the FTC. The last fine, which wasn’t even close to this magnitude, was the $22.5 million issued to Google in 2012 for their mishandling of privacy issues. A drop in the bucket compared to 5 billion but has the privacy issues and controversy stopped with Google? No, it hasn’t as we talk about privacy missteps from both Google and Facebook on this podcast almost every week.
So are “massive” fines the solution for companies that mishandle our privacy? It certainly doesn’t seem like it. What do you think is needed besides fines? Perhaps jail time for CEOs? One thing is for sure, something else needs to be done besides fines.
Do you read the privacy policies and the terms of service of the apps that you use? If not, the recent drama over an app called FaceApp may want to make you start reading these policies before you start using an app. FaceApp is an app that will make a selfie look younger, older, or
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