In a new report emails that have been found by Facebook, may shine a very negative light on CEO mark Zuckerberg and may in fact implicate him in several of the recent privacy controversies that have had an increasingly negative impact on the company’s share price, however Facebook denies this completely.
According to the recent publication, a large cache of recently revealed emails may show that Zuckerberg had extensive knowledge of privacy problems at Facebook long before the Cambridge scandal came to light which put Facebook on the defensive. Although it has not yet been reviewed by AMT associates, it has been noted that people close the probe do believe that the emails that have been seen do in fact show that Zuckerberg was more than aware of potential privacy problems which do in fact violate the 2012 settlement with regulators.
Facebook are currently under operation, while following a strict consent decree with the FTC that has been put in place to safeguard the privacy of the website users. With that in mind the company itself is currently looking to make a hasty settlement with the FTC which is currently in the middle of a huge probe into the way Facebook operates, and the way they handle user’s data.
The recent report suggests that the disclosures that have been made in the email leak will make that increasingly difficult for Zuckerberg to come to a quick solution.
In a statement made by Facebook they have said “We have fully cooperated with the FTC’s investigation to date and provided tens of thousands of documents, emails and files. We are continuing to work with them and hope to bring this matter to an appropriate resolution.” The spokesman continued to add that at no point did Zuckerberg or any other employee at Facebook violate the 2012 FTC consent order, and any talks of emails containing information saying otherwise do not exist.
According to the report, one of the alleged email exchanges occurred in April of 2012, and the exchange prompted regulators to take a deeper look in to it. It appeared that Zuckerberg voiced his own concerns about an app that made claims it had created a huge database with the user information of ‘millions’ of Facebook users. The exchange went on with Zuckerberg asking if such a large collection of their user data was possible, to which it was explained that it was, and it was the practice of many app developers. At no point in the alleged email exchange did Zuckerberg suggest that the practice of data collection in this way should be probed by the company. A spokesman for Facebook issued a statement following the Cambridge scandal admitting that they have previously acted too slowly to catch major security issues. The FTC is currently seeking a multibillion dollar settlement from the social media giant, and Facebook is expecting to pay between $3 and $5 Billion USD in fines to the federal regulatory body.
Anne Cheng – AMT Associates