United States of America: Filed FTC lawsuit against Twitter for misusing account security data

On 25 May 2022, the United States Department of Justice filed on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a lawsuit against Twitter for misusing user account security data. The filed lawsuit includes the FTC final order imposing a USD 150 million penalty, prohibiting Twitter from profiting from deceptively collected data, requiring to notify affected users and the obligation to develop a comprehensive privacy program subject to regular assessments. In its complaint, FTC stated that since 2013, Twitter collected user data, including phone numbers and email addresses, claiming to use it only for the protection of user accounts. However, the FTC found that Twitter gave access to this data on over 140 million users to advertisers, to be used to target users with advertisements. The FTC qualifies this deception by Twitter as a misrepresentation of its privacy and security practice, which is in violation of a 2011 FTC order.