Facebook's $5B FTC penalty after Cambridge Analytica
$5B
US Federal Trade Commission
US · 2019
Status: Paid
What happened
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.
Meta also paid a separate $100M SEC settlement in 2019 for misleading investors about the same misuse.
How it affected users
Personal data of tens of millions of people was exploited for political profiling and ad targeting without meaningful consent.
Status timeline
Jul 24, 2019
Penalty announced.
Sources
- FTC press releaseregulator
Last verified 2026-07-02. Spotted an error? Report a correction.
Cite this entry
Deepak Gupta, "Facebook's $5B FTC penalty after Cambridge Analytica," Tech Fines Directory, guptadeepak.com, 2019-07-24. https://guptadeepak.com/tech-fines/violation/meta-us-ftc-privacy-2019/