WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s a $150 million decision and the Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment before deciding to drop or modify a 2022 settlement order with the former company Twitter Inc.
With a bluebird logo, hashtags and tweets, Twitter Inc. operated for 17 years (20062023) as a social media and microblogging service, according to information at brittanica.com/money/ Twitter. Business entrepreneur Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 and he merged the social media service with his new business enterprise named X Corp. in April 2023. Twitter ceased to exist as a company, according to a court filing in California.
At the core of the allegations, an FTC investigation and official complaint states that between January and May of 2009, hackers gained administrative control of Twitter on two separate occasions, according to an FTC press release.
A hacker used an automated passwordguessing tool in January 2009 to gain administrative control of Twitter. Several passwords were reset and some were posted on a website for others to access. Bogus tweets were sent from about nine user accounts, including a tweet “from the account of then-President-elect Barack Obama, offering his more than 150,000 followers a chance to win $500 in free gasoline. At least one phony tweet was sent from the account of Fox News,” said the press release.
A second security breach in April 2009 enabled a hacker to guess the administrative password of a Twitter employee. In addition to resetting a Twitter user’s password, the hacker was also able to access nonpublic user information and tweets for any Twitter user.
Twitter agreed to settle the FTC charges that the company “deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information, marking the agency’s first such case against a social networking service.”
“When a company promises consumers that their personal information is secure, it must live up to that promise,” said David Vladeck, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Likewise, a company that allows consumers to designate their information as private must use reasonable security to uphold such designations. Consumers who use social networking sites may choose to share some information with others, but they still have a right to expect that their personal information will be kept private and secure.”
Under the terms of the settlement, Twitter was “barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information, including the measures it takes to prevent unauthorized access to nonpublic information and honor the privacy choices made by consumers. The company also must establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program, which will be assessed by an independent auditor every other year for 10 years,” said the FTC press release.
X Corp. cited several reasons in a recent petition why the settlement order should either be set aside or modified so that it does not continue past 2026. In part, the petition argues that the order was imposed on a company that no longer exists.
In addition, according to X Corp., every individual responsible for the underlying failures has left the company and that a world-class privacy and data-protection program has now been installed. Also at stake, the petition said, was the ability to advance American leadership in artificial intelligence.
The public will have until July 2 to submit comments on the petition. Instructions for filing comments appear on the docket, which is located at regulations. gov/docket/FTC-20260727. Once processed, the results will be posted on regulations. gov. After the comment period closes, the Commission will vote to determine how to resolve the petition.