UK Facebook Users Could Be Entitled Up To £12,500 After The Company's 'Breach Of Trust', According To Lawyer

Social media has forever changed the way people interact with their friends, family, and acquaintances. Chances are, your day starts and ends with a scroll through Facebook or Instagram.

It has recently became known that Cambridge Analytica illegally used personal information from more than 50 million Facebook users to target American voters using personalized political ads during the 2016 election.

If you're wondering why Facebook is implicated in this, remember that it's mainly because they had known the data analytics firm was using personal data since 2015, but only suspended them this year.

Before that, Cambridge Analytica harvested users' data from Facebook, and, therefore, it's highly likely that users of the social networking site had their private information looked into illegally.

In his interview with CNN, Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the "breach of trust".

He also took to his account to express an apology, in which he promised that Facebook would go to great lengths to redeem themselves.

"This was a major breach of trust and I'm really sorry. We have a basic responsibility to protect people's data and if we can't do that, we don't deserve to have the opportunity to serve people. Our responsibility now is to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it.

I started Facebook, and at the end of the day, I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community.

While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past.

We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward. I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together.

I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we'd like, but I promise you we'll work through this and build a better service over the long term."

A lawyer has claimed that people who had their data harvested could be eligible for receiving a considerable amount of cash. Maureen Mapp, a law professor, said that Facebook could be slapped with a bill of about £625 billion.

According to Dr. Mapp, approximately 50 million people had their data harvested by Cambridge Analytics. She also claims they could be entitled to a significant sum of money in damages.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that the interview Dr. Mapp gave to The Sun was very speculative and applies only to UK Facebook users. These users could - though it's highly unlikely - be entitled to damages under the Data Protection Act 1998.

There's no official or legitimate basis for the notion that users would be entitled to £12,500 before anybody begins to get their hopes up!

Facebook might be worth a whopping £317 billion, but if this unlikely situation occurs, it could cause major problems for the company.

David Barda, a data protection lawyer, has also estimated that the amount would be a lot less than the amount predicted by Dr. Mapp. "I think a much more realistic figure is £500 per claimant," he claimed. "The amount of compensation will depend on the level of distress suffered, but Facebook could be facing claims of up to £500 per Facebook user if those users were able to demonstrate their distress."

So it looks like the company is still in hot water with the public. And even though the prospect of a hefty sum of money to add to our bank balance would be great, the lawyers' claims are indeed no indications that such a plan is underway.

Reference: Viral Thread