Facebook agrees to pay $645,000 fine in UK over Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook agreed to pay a $645,000 fine in a case stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, without admitting liability.

Britain's Information Commissioner Office (ICO) had leveled the fine more than a year ago after concluding Facebook failed to safeguard the personal information of more than 1 million UK users.

FACEBOOK SUED FOR CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SCANDAL BY DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

"The ICO's main concern was that UK citizen data was exposed to a serious risk of harm," James Dipple-Johnstone, Deputy Commissioner of the ICO, said in a statement about the agreement: The  We are pleased to hear that Facebook has taken, and will continue to take, significant steps to comply with the fundamental principles of data protection. With this strong commitment to protecting people's personal information and privacy, we expect that Facebook will be able to move forward and learn from the events of this case."

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

Facebook was at pains to underline that the ICO had not found that the data had actually been transferred to Cambridge Analytica, which counted President Trump's 2016 election campaign among its clients.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
FB	NO DATA AVAILABLE	-	-	-

"We are pleased to have reached a settlement with the ICO," Harry Kinmonth, associate general counsel of Facebook, said in a statement. "As we have said before, we wish we had done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica in 2015. We made major changes to our platform back then, significantly restricting the information which app developers could access."

READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS BY CLICKING HERE

The Associated Press contributed to this report.