Australia Sues Facebook Over Cambridge Analytica, Fine Could Scale To $529B

An anonymous reader shares a report: Australia’s privacy watchdog is suing Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data breach — which, back in 2018, became a global scandal that wiped billions off the tech giant’s share price yet only led to Facebook picking up a $5B FTC fine. Should Australia prevail in its suit against the tech giant the monetary penalty could be exponentially larger. Australia’s Privacy Act sets out a provision for a civil penalty of up to $1,700,000 to be levied per contravention — and the national watchdog believes there were 311,074 local Facebook users in the cache of ~86M profiles lifted by Cambridge Analytica . So the potential fine here is circa $529B. (A very far cry from the 500k pound Facebook paid in the UK over the same data misuse scandal.)