Regis Duvignau / Reuters
Facebook will be hit with a maximum possible fine of £500,000 ($660,000) for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Britain's information commissioner has announced. Following an investigation, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concluded that Facebook failed to safeguard its users’ information and failed to be transparent about how that data was harvested by others. “Facebook has failed to provide the kind of protections they are required to under the Data Protection Act,” said information commissioner Elizabeth Denham. “Fines and prosecutions punish the bad actors, but my real goal is to effect change and restore trust and confidence in our democratic system.” The sum is paltry for a company that makes £500,000 every five and a half minutes. If the offences were to happen now, under new European data rules, Facebook could have been fined by as much as 4% of global turnover—which is $1.9bn. The information commissioner said: “This was a very serious contravention, so in the new regime they would face a much higher fine.”