Facebook accused of massive fraud in new lawsuit filed by Cook County

Enlarge / Signs for Cambridge Analytica in the lobby of the building in which the firm is based on March 21, 2018 in London. (credit: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

Cook County, Illinois, has joined the parade of lawsuits filed against Facebook in the wake of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal-the county is believed to be the first public entity to sue the social media giant and its former London-based business partner.

The case, which was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County on Friday, March 23, lays out similar allegations to the six other cases currently pending in federal court. Cook County argues that Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and the SCL Group, its corporate parent, violated users' privacy en masse when they violated Illinois laws against fraud.

Just over a week ago, The New York Times and The Observer, a British newspaper, broke the story that the British data analytics contractor, which worked with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, retained private data from 50 million Facebook users despite claiming to have deleted it. Facebook executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg have called Cambridge Analytica's actions a "breach of trust."

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