A court in the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão has ordered Facebook and Zoom to compensate users whose data they illegally collected. Both companies will have to pay 20 million reais (just over 4 million US dollars) in collective damages and 500 reais in personal compensation to each user involved.
In March 2020, Vice's Motherboard website revealed that the Zoom iOS app was sending user data to Facebook without the user's knowledge, even if the user did not have a Facebook account.
Zoom has implemented a “Log in from Facebook” button in its iOS app, allowing the social media giant to access Zoom's platform and extract user data. Zoom apologized for allowing a set of data “including information about the device, such as mobile OS type and version, device time zone, device OS, device model and carrier, screen size, processor cores, and disk space.” did.
The judge in the case found that Facebook and Zoom violated users' privacy rights by accessing data points that allowed them to drive ads, track and analyze user behavior, track conversion rates, and personalize users' app experiences. It was certified as Having access to this type of data can be valuable to advertisers.
In its defense, Zoom said it does not monetize data and added that it does not have a profit-sharing partnership with Facebook.
“Although it is claimed that the data collected from such apps is only used to create a better user interface or show targeted advertisements to users, it is not clear that such collection The risks of complete disregard for privacy are clear and require immediate remedial action,” wrote Observer Research Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank.
as brazil report Journalists Fabian Ziola Menezes and Amanda Audi revealed in November 2023 that Brazil's data protection regulations allow virtually any kind of information sharing for marketing purposes. A critical mass of consumers have yet to challenge predatory models in court.
But experts hope that the sharing of personal data for marketing purposes will eventually come to the attention of Brazil's Data Protection Agency.