AFTER so much complaining and anger about Facebook’s failure to safeguard information, it is only going to be a facing a £500,000 fine.

Whilst this is the largest fine a business can face for data breaches, this will only be a drop in the ocean for a company like Facebook which is worth around £445 billion and it will make the money back probably within an hour.

Because the fine is so little, it is hardly likely to change how the company operates.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the social media giant broke the law by neglecting to be transparent about how the data was harvested by others.

Although the size of the fine is a record for the ICO, campaigners said under new data laws, the penalty could have totalled hundreds of millions of pounds.

The ICO proposes to bring criminal action against SCL Elections, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica (CA).

In March, Channel 4 News, in co-ordination with the New York Times and the Observer, revealed that the data of 50 million Facebook users around the world had been harvested. The total is now estimated at 87 million, the ICO said.

It has raised concerns about political parties buying personal information from “data brokers”.

Specifically it named one company used by the Labour Party, Emma’s Diary, which gives medical advice and free baby-themed products to parents.

For it to be taken seriously the fine should be proportional to how much money the business is making. In Facebook’s case it should be at least a few hundred million.

In 2017 it was fined 110m euros (£95m) by the European Commission, which in the same year punished Google for 2.42bn euros (£2.1bn) and these are more in accordance with the sort of sanctions that should be given to global businesses.

Information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said companies also worried about reputational damage which is fair enough, but if the fine is going to be so insignificant to a business, why issue one at all?

If financial deterrents are not an issue, it would be worth trying some other methods for example restricting the amount of services that Facebook is allowed to operate.