Facebook pays the price for storing user data illegally

World’s biggest social-media company, Facebook, had been accused with illegally storing user data. The company had finally agreed to settle the lawsuit against it by paying $550 million. This is one of the largest consumer privacy settlements in US history.

Facebook had finally accepted defeat in its fight to persuade the US Supreme Court to derail the case. Facebook Inc.’s photo scanning technology was accused of violating an Illinois law by illegally gathering and storing biometric data without the user’s permission

Meanwhile, the company had reported a record fourth-quarter revenue of $21.1 billion. This was primarily due to the ads on Instagram and in video. The fourth-quarter revenue shows a 25 percent increase than what it had been in the previous year. Currently, the company has a total of 2.89 billion monthly active users from all its products around the world.

Facebook knows that growing at the same rate will be extremely difficult – if not impossible – in the near future. This is because the number of internet users in the world is limited and most of them are already using its products such as Instagram and WhatsApp. The company will soon have to start experimenting with different avenues for income – which may or may not pay off.