Facebook sued in UK for Cambridge Analytica scandal

The class action lawsuit seeks damages from Facebook over a failure to comply with the Data Protection Act 1998

A journalist has filed a mass lawsuit with the High Court in London against Facebook, for its alleged failure to prevent third parties from accessing the data of about a million users in England and Wales.

Peter Jukes brought the case, claiming that his data was compromised between November 2013 and May 2015, when the social network allowed third-party app 'This Is Your Digital Life' to access millions of users' data without their consent or prior knowledge.

'This Is Your Digital Life' was a personality quiz app created by researcher Aleksander Kogan. It allegedly transferred information on millions of users from Facebook to British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica was forced to shut down in 2018, after it was found to have used personal data harvested from Facebook to influence the results of the US 2016 Presidential Elections.

The mass legal action claim by Jukes seeks damages from Facebook over failure to comply with the Data Protection Act 1998. Mr Jukes said his main purpose is to ensure that the situation doesn ' t arise again.

Mr Jukes is represented by law firm Hausfeld, 'on behalf of those Facebook friends'.

The case has been brought forward using the Civil Procedure Rules, which allow a claimant to file a case on behalf of a class of people with the same interest (also known as a class action lawsuit).

Michael Bywell, partner at Hausfeld, said Facebook had neglected its duty to protect users ' personal data.

"With an experienced team, committed class representative and funding and after-the-event insurance in place, we believe this claim offers the best avenue of redress for consumers who suffered at the hands of Facebook ' s failure to abide by data protection laws," he added.

In a statement to BBC News, Facebook said that an earlier investigation conducted by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had found 'no evidence' to suggest that the data of any UK or EU users was transferred to Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook reached a deal with the ICO over the misuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica in October 2019. As part of the deal, Facebook was asked to pay a £500,000 fine - the max the ICO could legally charge, pre-GDPR.

Two months later, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) officially ruled that Cambridge Analytica had deceived Facebook users through its misleading data-gathering practices. The FTC's ruling came nearly 18 months after the scandal first broke.

The FTC had previously accused Cambridge Analytica, app developer Kogan, and CEO Alexander Nix of collecting millions of Facebook users' personal data through the quiz app.

The FTC said that Kogan worked with Nix to enable his research app to collect data from Facebook users and their friends. The app misled users by claiming that it would not collect their personal data, but did in fact do so. The data was then used for voter profiling and targeting.

The scandal raised red flags over how technology firms protect users' personal data. It also eventually led to a congressional appearance by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.