Bitcoin Forum

Twitter broke their promise about how they collected their user data (email and phone number), they violated the agreement^[1] that was presented in the paperwork with the authorities back in 2011, and they have been charged and fined $150 million for selling it for Ads.
Similar organizations have exploited data in business, and many of them have always denied it to the public, but after further digging and investigation, the lies become burst into the public.

https://i.imgur.com/D41TDPz.png
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/25/1101275323/twitter-privacy-settlement-doj-ftc

---

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22038327-ftc-settlement-twitter

I've said it before: don't believe what the big companies say, just because they pinky swear it.

Greed is big. The investors want results, i.e. trucks of money.
Policies change over time and they may tell you or they may "forget" to tell you about that.

Users' data is a hugely valuable asset. And, believe it or not, the related legislation is so thin, we can say we're still in the times of wild west.

These big corps all follow the same principle of Zuck's.

Do first, apologize later.

In this particular case, Twitter probably has made a lot more profits than the penalty amount ($150m) by selling their user data. So they can get away with it even after paying the fine and I am pretty sure they will come up with a creative way to avoid this penalty anyway.

Tiwtter, Facebook, Google these companies make their money from ads. They are ad companies. If you want to kill them fast, use an adblocker.

When you fine a company that is supposedly worth over $40 billion with a fine of only $150 million, then it is not really a punishment but a public performance that wants to show how someone in a regulatory agency does their job. If someone really wants to change something, then the penalties must be far greater - otherwise this is nothing but a farce that will continue indefinitely.

I'm really interested in what the new T boss will do in this regard, especially when we know how much he paid for his new toy.

Once you give out your data for KYC purpose, then it can be sold to third parties by the organization that you gave it to. Even if not sold, it can be given to third parties. Even if not freely given or sold to third parties, it can be hacked. To reman private, you should not give out you personal data, especially in crypto, to exchanges and other centralized services organizations.

it is a form of cheating and is an unpleasant act. Just imagine that personal data is private and cannot be transmitted for any reason. especially for commercial advertisements, indeed not everyone accepts services or offers of advertisements either on twitter itself or spam that enters cell phone contacts. we send data only for verification and TOS only. but if twitter users know the long tail of this data misappropriation, of course they will think they still have an account on one of these phenomenal social networks. but it might be a mistake that twitter.inc did unknowingly. let's fix what happened

That's why having a social media account will risking your KYC,.I have an accounts before, but I decided to delete it all and only become a guest if I want to read any posts or news on there. I can't remember which personal information I had send in my social medias, but at least it's a lesson for me to not repeat it. Anyway did this news caused by Elon Musk after bought twitter?

Once personal data is shared, it should be considered to no longer be personal, regardless of what the other party claims they wish to use it for.
Data is one of the biggest markets and social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google and the rest have loads of it by collecting presumably harmless data to fulfil whatever sign up conditions they set. It has become so much of a norm now, users barely care what is collected and how it is used, or rather they fail to see any danger in their phone number, or web history being tracked and stored.

This is a trend that is not going to stop anytime soon, best to take precautions to protect yourself if you do not want your details shared.

Give me a gun, also load it with bullets I promise I will not release a shot. I only need the gun to protect you from enemies so that they will not attack you, neither will they get you when they attack said tweeter.

There's a sound outside and it's exactly like the sound of the gun used to protect me. I now asked, have enemies come? And they replied No, there's no enemies. We just wanted to test the gun and be sure it is working, so that when enemies will come, we will be confident that we can protect you.

Me: but you have violated the agreement that you will only shoot when enemies come.
Tweeter: We are very sorry.
Me: OK, give me the gun so that if enemies come, I will be able to protect myself.
Tweeter: No, you are not trained to handle gun, if given gun, you may shoot yourself  ;D

The question is, did they made more money from this or not? If they made more money from this, that means that they are going to repeat and they do not mind, because in the end it was still profitable and Twitter is a company, they do not care about your user data or whatever, they care about making a profit just like every other company. However, if there is a good law that will keep them in check, like first time is 150 million but the second time is 15 billion or even worse, then maybe they will reconsider it next time. Or if they lost money on this from the get go, then they will definitely not want to do it at all.

personal data is privacy but almost all big companies (especially social media) don't keep their promises...

A few years ago, Facebook was also on trial with a similar case (spreading/selling of customer's personal data). i don't know if this happened because of their new CEO because as far as i know jack dorsey is very hard on the privacy of its users.

Broke their promise? They broke the law and got caught. Frankly it shows that the regulators are always far behind the criminal activity taking places and it's probably by sheer luck that they got wind of this. Facebook went through similar things and you know what they most likely learned? How to hide the malicious activity they are doing even better, and besides that - the punishment is likely to cost them tiny amounts compared to the money they can potentially earn from abusing data in these ways. $150 million sounds like a big number to us, but it's pittance to this multibillion dollar company and comes under the "cost of business" category in some accounting line. The regulators need to be more proactive instead of reactive if they want applause.

People upset at Twitter should also look towards facebook and particularly google for manipulating user search results along the political leanings of executives that run the company, who on top will take user data and sell it to the highest bidder. When something is free, you are the product. If politicians weren't spineless they would regulate these large tech corporations, but they realize political campaigns become easier with big tech censoring the opposition.

Comes to a point where it's not really that surprising anymore if we do talk about probabilities on having those user data would leaked or something that's been sold and is there something that we can do? Nothing!

Just like you've said that companies could easily make U-turn and would break out those promises that they do have in the past that's why it's better to prepare nor get used yourself into these stuffs considering for it to be that typical.

There’s still a lot of companies that sells are identity, this is why we are receiving emails/phone messages regarding something and its good that they finally have a proof with this one, so for sure people will be more aware about sharing their personal information and be careful next time. I wonder if banks also do the same thing? Maybe someone should initiate the investigation with them.

This is already known, being centralized these corporate networks will go on selling user data when they feel greedy. Often we see these kind of issues, data collection and selling is a big profit of modern day economy. Every firm says that they don't sell our data to anyone. Based on different analytics, data is the key on each and every business. It is found that every user data on an average with health care records costs $250. In this situation surely these fellows fall for big money.

The companies they sold user data to should be fined as well. This will discourage others from the act but I'm afraid it has become a tool that's become necessary in today's market. Private companies pay good money for user data, it helps them know what to sell you and how to sell you. It's all geared towards advertising and selling their products. Google is the biggest offender of this crime, they spy on their users all the time.

It's what I was thinking too. This amount is just a slap in the wrist for these big platforms.

Where do these fines go by the way?


First thing you have to look at is that are they prohibited from getting these kinds of information? Are they also prohibited from using it and selling their prpducts? Personal information are protected but I don't think it's treated the same way as buying illegal drugs.

Yeaa I don't think fines should be the only punishment for selling user data. Or if it was, then at least make it an amount where it could visibly damage the company so that they'd think twice before doing it again (or for other companies, doing it). Even if we do say that this is the usual practice that these big companies do, it doesn't make it an excuse for the law to let them do as such, especially if it wasn't an actual first instance for these big companies to do it.
Don't use them. Or at least, don't give out any info you think could potentially lead to you. Use a throwaway email address, and a mobile number as well if possible.

Of course they make money because why risk their company's reputation if they can't get more money in this illegal way. Twitter has changed ownership but we know the new owners are people who are also money oriented and all entrepreneurs are like that and will they continue to look for ways to profit by using their user data.

These huge companies lie to their teeth even though they have legally sworn they will not do what they shouldn't do. Big companies will always find loopholes, legally or not, to have things their way and to make more profit off of their consumers without them knowing of what these huge companies are doing. IMO, $150m is not enough of a fine for selling users data. It should be more. Remember Google's $5b fine in EU? Not entirely similar case but the nature through which they took advantage of their users is very similar.

Unfortunately, there are companies making billions off this situation and they are fine with it. Remember that before 2016 elections of trump, and even brexit, there were companies buying and selling data and using it to make sure that they got their candidate elected.

If they could convince their own view people to go out to vote in bunches, they did that via ads, if they could convince opponents people to stay home, they did that. They did everything they could, not just to convince people to vote for a candidate, but precise ads for each person in order to get the most optimum result for their candidate. This shows that these data could be used to literally rule the world.

I read the article, I tried to search around, but I couldn't see anything about the profit they made! It's my first thought as well, if they need to pay a $150 million fine how much did they earn in the first place!? I guess we are talking about billions here...


It's why I don't like KYC! It's why I don't leave my phone number everywhere... it's why we need privacy! I guess they would sell our asses just to make a profit, only if they could!

The fine itself seems like a slapp on the wrist and nothing more than that. For a number like that, twitter and other companies can afford to sell the data and pay the fines if the get caught. I mean, they made 5B dollars last year, so a couple of houndred mill here or there is just written of as bussiness expendeture at this point.

Precisely.
During the era of door to door sales; salesmen have to knock on the doors of tens or hundreds of people, majority of who are not interested in the product being put on sale. Fast forward to today, companies can simply collect datat of what user searched for what product, or who said what in a conversation, market that data to retail services with location of the potential customers and this is just a pinch of what data could be used to do.

After all those hopes that the platform will achieve progress in spreading freedom of expression with the acquisition of a single mask and his promises to develop it.
It is truly a resounding surprise that such serious charges are being brought against him.

This is supposed to destroy its reputation, especially since it is not known the true amount of data that was used and whether this will not be repeated again in the future.

On the era on what we do have today where accessibility could really be done in almost instant then its no surprise that we would really be putting on a situation where data could really be used
into different aspects which it could really be putting them into advantage specially on having sales or connected to it.

Thats why any platform specially centralized ones couldn't really be trusted 100% when it comes to our information which it could be potentially be leaked or be used into other aspects
on which we are currently seeing on what Twitter is been doing.

For the sake of money then everyone or everything could really make a sudden turn without having doubts.

I hope Elon Musk will not entertain selling user information and i believe he purchased the toy to make changes to their business behavior especially how they are censoring users for their opinion. I am not a big time social media user even though i used when it started and i stopped because everything you get for free you need to sacrifice your privacy and data.

Promises and words uttered by social medias' managers mean nothing, because they are constantly changing their policies and terms of service. It's common to login into twitter or facebook accounts and have yourself freezed into a new agreement page where you have to say you accept the new terms imposed to you, as a platform's user. From months to months a new agreement is imposed by those platforms and I don't doubt between those little repetitive words there is something like "I agree you sell my personal data to whoever you want", although they are never going to defend a position like that publicly, so they need to play the good guys now saying they are very commited with the privacy of their users and wouldn't sell their data anymore.

That is ridiculous and revolting. The minimum twitter should do were to say to who they have sold data, for how much and provide a mechanism for every users to check if they had informations sold. Moreover, give the money they were paid to the people who had data leaked.

The purchase is still not final as far as I know, Elon is playing with Twitter and tries to manipulate its value, most probably he will do the same thing. Many companies sells the data of the users and I wonder when the government will caught other social media companies, protecting the details of every user is a must, its just that there’s a big money for selling it and that’s why many are doing this.

Confidential data should be more safe on a company like this but then again, they failed to do so and that’s why they are being fined by that huge amount of money. With the technology that we have right now, I think many of us are already exposed so better to use every security feature to assure that your personal account are more safe. Twitter is not the only company who are doing this, many are still have under the table transactions.

High likely that it is not only twitter, only that they are being exposed. Other social media channels for sure are also guilty but they need to find evidence about the deception among its users. This is why I am not really into social media. You should limit your information that you share publicly, because this is where scammers also find their vulnerable victims. As much as possible, safeguard your privacy by not patronizing these social media channels. If you are just after for the likes of people, then, better not do it. They won't help you when you really need actual help.

I remember the words somewhere, "if any company gives you completely free of charge to use their amazing service, you are actually their main product". As people think above, millions of user data is worth more than $150 million and that won't stop Twitter from continuing its mission.
I think I recognize the signs of a company that performs this operation, as they always ask for my up-to-date information which is not really needed.

Almost every tech companies are doing this so why the Twitter alone? No data we enter into the social media is safe anymore because we are their products and they make money by only selling our data to the advertisement companies so anyone who think they're at the safer platform then has to rethink about it but wait they are doing more worse than just selling our numbers and email which is the spying of all our activities because they have access to all the things from camera, microphone, file manager,etc...

Once I watched a video in which the judge asked Mark Zuckerberg - he asked Mark - would you like to tell public in which restaurant you ate last night and where did you go last week? He said No, the judged said why are you making people's information public than? So they want different rules for themselves and other rules for public.

Can't be really surprised when a big company and organization gives some promises but in the end, they forget everything and break all the promises they gave to their clients. While some people are thinking most of the great and famous companies will neer abuse the data they get from the users the companies all always thinking about how you abuse their users and milk more money from them or from their information, In is case apologizing will never solve anything however it was a good a memorable lesson for many people about sharing their personal information on the social media, these nowadays data is the most valuable thing on the internet and surly for any company that's not really unexpecting to abuse the data they collect from the users.

Well in the Facebook he created an environment where people are addicted to it to expose themselves for likes and to satisfy their goals they start to expose everything as much as they can and Facebook just helped the people to organise it so they can sell for better prices and also concentrated data. Already Facebook and other tech companies sued by lot of cases on different countries and also many of them even make them to pay in Billion still they can operate after simply paying the fine.

They have no other choice but to continue this practice. Data is the most valuable commodity at today's date. Big companies like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram will shut down if they are not allowed to use their user's data.

Try using Facebook's Business manager and try setting up an advertisement. You will understand how specific selections you can make. That is a goldmine for the businesses who can target specific user class for their business which will give them great result. So next time if you see a digital platform offering their platform for free, you must know that you will be paying through your data.

Would really be just that common sense that they would really be using something to monetize and since its also a business then its understandable with that kind of probability on using up those
precious user's data and there's nothing we can do with it and if you dont like that of practice then you could leave anytime and find another else but since its one of the most famous
social media platform then you won't really be having any choice but to accept on what are the things that they could possibly do in the future and just like this one where users
data is been sold, so better take a good grasp on it.

This is a good move to me because Twitter had been into this for long and they needed to be prosecuted with huge fines that is more than what had been presented in the court of law. I hope this will limit Twitter when it comes to sharing  the privacy of users during ads uses. I think Twitter is not left out here alone but also other social media like Facebook, Instagram etc. It is obvious that there are still other privacy matters like this one that need to be unvealed to the public. The government have to be very serious about this so it will prevent contineous occurrence.

AFAIK every website and media platform requesting end user agreement to tracking cookies sells user data.

Even state and government sectors like the DMV (department of motor vehicles) have been publicized selling data for millions of citizens.

They should blanket ban the process of collecting user data or leave it unregulated.

Arbitrarily selecting some corporations for punishment while leaving thousands of others unpenalized is a disproportionate approach of addressing the issue.

Privacy violations committed by twitter of course have caused distrust of its users over the years, even previous twitter had received a fine of £400,000 in December 2020 for violating the European GDPR data privacy rules, but surprisingly they are now doing the same thing again with using user data for targeted advertising, I think that with this case, social media is indeed not safe a place to save our data, because previously the largest social media in the world, Facebook was also involved in a user data leak scandal and they should be fined around 5 million dollars in 2019.
With 2 cases that hit the 2 largest social media today, of course we as users should be careful in providing our original data to second parties (social media).

I have heard several times from start-up companies claiming that their consumer data was hacked, from the start I believed that it might not have been hacked but sold, it can be seen that email and my mobile phone received offers from insurance, and many services offered and I never knew before.

These companies and their privacy are ridiculous and I wish that they would come down harder on them as they all seem to keep doing the same stuff over and over.  Facebook of course being one of if not the worst of all.  I live in Illinois and there was a class action lawsuit recently where many facebook users in Illinois were given around $400-600 dollars.  The thing that sucks is you had to sign up for the suit by a certain point in time which I missed.  Probably because I keep my account deactivated but still, I feel wronged in a way for not being paid that out as they stole my data too.

I would be happy if some of the money can go to us because it was our data's not and not the one's who sues twitter. Why they are doing this all the time? They accuse and want's to sue's every social media sites for the same reasons. They will say something like this xxx company have been selling the data's and personal information of its users while we the real costumers didn't even worry that much.

I don't know if the old founders of twitter can contribute something for the payment because they controlled twitter for a long time or is the new twitter owners are going to pay all of these charges? That's going to be a bad start then for them.

When we register on any site that requires data such as email, mobile phone, even in exchanges today that most must provide data for KYC will make us always worry if the data we provide is sold, anything for money then can make controversy things, and Of the many cases of hack data in many exchanges and sites like Facebook and Twitter, I never verify KYC.

That is because 99% of the companies that do not charge you anything for using it (like facebook, twitter, instagram, google etcetc) all make money from ads. What does ads achieve? They sell stuff to people who are interested in those things. Like for example my twitter is filled with ads regarding crypto, and all from crypto companies.

Because, twitter basically sold my data to those companies, even if they do not directly give (which OP shows that they actually did) it means that any company could say "people interested in crypto" and twitter will show it to me, hence it is basically selling my data the same way, just not directly.

Looking at Twitter situation is different, they don't request for documentation to KYC, so no one will suspect them of selling users data, they requested for email and phone but in your mind, you will think they are doing that to reduce spam and make sure that those who have registered are valid users but it verified real emails and phone numbers are one of the few the most lucrative business on internet, they have people on dark web who are ready to buy this phone numbers and email base on locations on their IP address.

Every information that you had able to put online will really reflect out or would really be in connection on legit users/persons which could really be used on other means and its not surprising that these platforms

would really be attached or tagged on such issue on selling out personal users data and there's nothing we can do about it yet we had provided them since from the start on using their platform from emails to phone

numbers which same as you said that these these are valuable these days which high tendency or chances for it to be sold in unknown markets.

This is what bothers me the most. By this logic the ones who got our data made profit, the ones who sold our data made profit, the ones who punished twitter got profit, and even though it is our data that caused all of us this, none of us got any money at all.

Makes no sense to me to be fair, I would like to see some of that money because all of this money was made based on my data, my information, all the things related to me but I am the only one who didn't make a single dollar out of it. Even if it is just 10 cents, it should be given out to each person that data included, it is not about the money but more about the notion behind it.

I am starting to worry about my data, to be honest I have some social media accounts. I've FB account, Twitter account, Instagram account, and some other social media accounts. Unfortunately, these accounts are created for important purposes such as job requirements. Should I delete all my social media accounts, brother?

You are right. When we shared it to register accounts on social media, they know our data and possibly use it as well.
But it is sometimes hard to avoid since everyone must have a social media account as it is a necessary thing for now.