Twitter Could Pay Up To $250 Million For FTC Violation

Twitter owes some major money to the Federal Trade Commission.

The company, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, is expected to pay at least $150 million to $250 million after violating the terms of their 2011 consent order from the commission.

The quarterly 10-Q report says that “the allegations relate to the Company’s use of phone number and/or email address data provided for safety and security purposes for targeted advertising during periods between 2013 and 2019.”

In more simple terms, this means that the complaint is not related to last month’s hack of prominent accounts, but actually related to the a matter of two-factor authentication where users provide phone numbers and email addresses that were in turn used for ad targeting purposes.

A Twitter spokesperson said, “Following the announcement of our Q2 financial results, we received a draft complaint from the FTC alleging violations of our 2011 consent order. Following standard accounting rules we included an estimated range for settlement in our 10Q filed on August 3.”

With the violation, Twitter has also agreed to build and maintain an information security program to be assessed by an independent auditor for 10 years after the agreement.

Just recently, Twitter established a new company holiday to commemorate this event.