Twitter agrees to pay $150 million to settle allegations that it misused user information for advertising purposes

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission said in a release and court filing that they had reached a $150 million settlement with the company.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said that the $150 million penalty reflected the seriousness of the allegations.

The complaint was filed in California. It says that from May 2013 to September of this year, it only asked for email and phone numbers for account security.

The filing said that people were not told that their contact information would be used for targeted advertising.

The FTC Act and the 2011 Order prohibit the company from making misrepresentations regarding the security of nonpublic consumer information.

The practice violated the European Union-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Frameworks.

Before the EU's General Data Protection Regulation was invalidated in 2020, there was a set of privacy requirements that regulated data transfers between the EU and other countries. The EU and the US agreed in principle to a new framework in March, but the details haven't been finalized.

The practice affected more than 140 million users and boosted the revenue of the company.

According to the release, the $150 million will be paid out, but there will be strict measures taken by the FTC and DOJ as a result of the settlement.

If they joined before the year's end, the social media company will have to write reports for a data privacy issue that affects 250+ users and let US users know their options for protecting their privacy and security.

It will have to do a privacy review and write a report before releasing any new product or service that collects private information.

In a post on his website, the chief privacy officer of the company confirmed that it would pay $150 million to the agencies.

He wrote that they had cooperated with the FTC every step of the way.

We will continue to partner with our regulators to make sure they understand how security and privacy practices at Twitter are always evolving for the better.

The settlement needs to be approved in federal court.