If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) were a private business, it would be having a very good quarter.
The FTC recently agreed to a $700 million settlement with Equifax over its massive 2017 data security breach, which exposed the personal information of nearly 150 million people. And now the agency has blown the doors off of its previous record fine by finalizing a $5 billion settlement with Facebook for violating its existing 2011 Consent Order for Facebook’s handling of personal information. Prior to this, the largest fine in the agency’s 100-plus-year history had been a $22.5 million dollar settlement with Google in 2012.
To be fair, a decent portion of the Equifax $700 million fine is to be used to compensate consumers who suffered from the breach, such as providing credit monitoring services or even cash payments.
So how much do consumers get from the Facebook settlement? Zero.