Twitter Agrees to Pay $150 Million to Settle FTC Data Probe (2)

Twitter has agreed to pay $150 million to settle allegations by the US Federal Trade Commission that it misused users’ phone numbers uploaded for security purposes to target advertising, according to court filings Wednesday.

Twitter’s use of the phone numbers breached a 2011 consent decree with the FTC in which the social media platform agreed to better protect users’ personal data, according to a complaint filed by the Justice Department on behalf of the agency. The complaint also alleges that Twitter falsely claimed it had complied with user privacy protections under EU-US data transfer agreements.

The FTC lacks the authority ...