US Federal Trade Commission

The FTC imposed a $5B penalty and sweeping new privacy restrictions after finding that Facebook deceived users about their ability to control personal data, in violation of a 2012 consent order. Third-party apps had harvested data on up to 87 million users in the Cambridge Analytica episode. It was the largest privacy penalty in history at the time.

The FTC settled claims that Amazon tricked consumers into enrolling in Prime through deceptive sign-up flows and made cancellation deliberately difficult, an internal process nicknamed Iliad. The settlement comprised a $1B civil penalty and $1.5B in refunds to about 35 million customers.

The FTC and the New York Attorney General alleged that YouTube collected personal data from viewers of child-directed channels through cookies, without parental consent, and used it for targeted advertising. It was a record COPPA penalty at the time.

The FTC and DOJ penalised Twitter, now X, for using phone numbers and email addresses collected for account security, such as two-factor authentication, to target advertising.

The FTC settled claims that Amazon kept children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely, against COPPA and parents' deletion requests.

The FTC penalised Google for circumventing Safari's default cookie-blocking to track users for advertising, despite telling those users they were protected. It was a record FTC civil penalty at the time.

The FTC settled claims that Ring employees and contractors improperly accessed customers' home camera videos, and that lax security allowed outside access.