Facebook breached the privacy of more than 300,000 Australians by allowing a third party to sell their data to Cambridge Analytica, the Australian Information Commissioner has alleged.
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Information Commissioner Angeline Falk is taking Federal Court action against the social media giant, alleging serious and repeated contraventions of Australia's privacy laws.
Facebook is accused of allowing user data to be exposed through the This Is Your Digital Life app, developed by Cambridge University researcher Dr Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research Ltd.
Around 53 people installed the app in Australia from November 2013 until December 2015. However approximately 311,074 friends of the installers had their personal information requested by the app.
The creators of This Is Your Digital Life had asked Facebook for permission to collect the personal data of users and their friends on May 6, 2014, but was rejected a day later. Despite this the app continued to harvest users' information, including birthdates, current cities, liked posts and friend lists.
The data was then on-sold to SCL, a political consulting firm based in London and the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, which used the information for political profiling.
The company worked on US president Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign.
Facebook became aware of the data harvesting on 11 December 2015 and killed the app. But while it had a written agreement with the company to delete user's personal information, it failed to independently confirm this.
In a statement on Monday, Ms Falk described it as a "systemic failure" by the company to comply with Australian privacy laws.
"We consider the design of the Facebook platform meant that users were unable to exercise reasonable choice and control about how their personal information was disclosed," Ms Falk said.
"Facebook's default settings facilitated the disclosure of personal information, including sensitive information, at the expense of privacy.
"We claim these actions left the personal data of around 311,127 Australian Facebook users exposed to be sold and used for purposes including political profiling, well outside users' expectations."
In a statement, Facebook said it had "actively engaged" with the information commissioner's office over the course of its two-year investigation.
"We've made major changes to our platforms, in consultation with international regulators, to restrict the information available to app developers, implement new governance protocols and build industry-leading controls to help people protect and manage their data," a company spokesperson said.
"We're unable to comment further as this is now before the Federal Court."
