Practices Investigations: California-Based Company and Facebook

practices investigations: Facebook has said it may cost as much as 5 billion to resolve a Federal Trade Commission probe of its privacy practices, according to The Japan Times. The Menlo Park, California-based company also faces a consumer class action over those practices and investigations in several states. ; Facebook had argued the court should stay the matter because of other cases, but it now needs to produce documents for the D.C. judge. The decision on Friday by D.C. Superior Court Judge Fern Saddler adds to the pressure on the company to change how it handles subscribers' personal information. We do not believe this lawsuit has any merit and will continue to defend ourselves vigorously,' Facebook said in a statement responding to the ruling, calling privacy a top priority.' The case was filed in December by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, who accused Facebook of giving Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan access to the personal information of some 70 million Americans, 340,000 of whom live in the capital. We will immediately turn our focus to obtaining all of the evidence proving that Facebook broke District law and did not follow its own policies to protect the privacy of more than 340,000 Facebook users who reside in the District,' Racine said in a statement. That data were later exploited for the campaign by the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.