Facebook Expanding In-House Legal Privacy Team After Massive Fine
The social media and tech giant's push to strengthen its privacy compliance efforts comes after the Federal Trade Commission slapped Facebook in July 2019 with a record-setting $5 billion penalty for consumer privacy violations.
January 29, 2020 at 01:09 PM
4 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Corporate Counsel
Photo: AngieYeoh/Shutterstock.com
Facebook Inc. appears to be on an in-house privacy lawyer hiring spree as the social media and tech giant continues to get its compliance house in order following last year's $5 billion fine over privacy violations.
In the past week, the Silicon Valley firm has posted more than a dozen ads seeking associate general counsel and lead counsel to join Facebook's legal privacy team.
One recent hire, Jeanne Sheahan, left her position as vice president and head of privacy compliance at First Republic Bank in San Francisco to serve as an associate GC of privacy at Facebook. She announced Tuesday in a LinkedIn post that she starts her new job in February.
"For those that know me well, I am deeply passionate about data protection and love rolling up my sleeves to tackle the unprecedented challenges that accompany the privacy profession. I could not be more eager to partner with the numerous individuals, colleagues and friends that share my passion in this next chapter," Sheahan wrote.
Sheahan's background includes experience as assistant GC of global privacy for Groupon from 2015 to 2018. She helped lead the e-commerce company's worldwide data protection program and General Data Protection Regulation compliance efforts.
Facebook is looking to hire privacy lawyers in Silicon Valley, Seattle, New York and Washington, D.C. The company describes ideal candidates as "flexible" in-house lawyers who can "advise the company on a range of privacy, data protection and security-related legal and compliance initiatives for Facebook, Instagram, and/or WhatsApp."
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday, which was, fittingly, Data Privacy Day, that one of the company's "main goals for the next decade is to build much stronger privacy protections for everyone on Facebook."
Part of that effort involves making it easier for Facebook users to review and adjust their privacy settings, according to Zuckerberg. The company has rolled out new privacy tools that alert users when they use Facebook to interact with third-party apps and give users more control over personal data that apps and websites share with Facebook.
The company's push to strengthen its privacy compliance efforts comes after the Federal Trade Commission slapped Facebook in July 2019 with a record-setting $5 billion penalty for consumer privacy violations.
"We are taking the necessary steps to implement the FTC agreement by hiring and putting dozens of teams in place, making many of the required structural and technical changes, and expanding privacy protections across our products," Michel Protti, Facebook's chief privacy officer of product, stated in an email Wednesday.
The FTC's settlement order requires Facebook to "restructure its approach to privacy from the corporate board-level down, and establishes strong new mechanisms to ensure that Facebook executives are accountable for the decisions they make about privacy, and that those decisions are subject to meaningful oversight."
During an investigation that preceded the settlement, the FTC and Justice Department found that Facebook used deceptive disclosures and privacy settings to deceive users about how their data and the data of their Facebook friends was being shared with third-party apps.
Read More:
Top Lesson for General Counsel From Cambridge Analytica Data Case: Tell the Truth
Class Actions Against Facebook, Cambridge Analytica Consolidated in N.D. California
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