FTC to bolster action against big tech data violations, says chair

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has noted that more aggressive actions will be taken by the agency against data misuse by big tech companies after it was sued by Meta to reverse a rule preventing the monetization of children's information, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Such a rule, which also included facial recognition tech limits, was imposed upon Meta after the FTC identified the company allegedly misled parents on the level of control they have over their children's accounts on the Messenger Kids app, as well as the level of user data access it gives to app developers, which violated a 2020 order that involved a $5 billion fine. "We've seen historically firms do treat fines, even fines that sound really large millions of dollars, even billions of dollars they can sometimes treat those fines as a cost of doing business, if the underlying illegal tactics that they're engaging in are valuable enough to them," said Khan.