The Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) has filed two administrative proceedings against Facebook in Brazil, due to the leak of Brazilian user’s personal data.
The proceedings refer to the wrongful use of personal data by the Cambridge Analytica consultancy firm and the activity of hackers within the social network, which have stolen personal data from Brazilian users, such as name, e-mail, telephone number, sites visited and internet searches. Regarding the consultancy firm, Facebook shared information of 87 million people, among which 500,000 were Brazilians.
According to the MJSP, Facebook has ten days to submit its defense and answer the questions raised, including the number of Brazilian users affected and the purpose of capturing user data. The proceedings also aim to detect if shared data was made available to other companies without specific user consent and what does the social network do to ensure protection of personal data. In addition, the company should explain what measures it is taking to solve these issues.
If convicted in both proceedings, Facebook could be fined up to approximately USD 6 million.
More information, in Portuguese, is available at http://www.justica.gov.br/news/senacon-notifica-facebook-a-prestar-esclarecimentos-sobre-dados-dos-usuarios.1