Facebook has dropped an appeal against a £500,000 (€0.58m) fine imposed by the UK’s data protection watchdog for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. As part of the agreement, Facebook has made no admission of liability.

The social media giant said it “wished it had done more to investigate Cambridge Analytica” earlier. James Dipple-Johnstone, deputy commissioner of the ICO said: “The ICO’s main concern was that UK citizen data was exposed to a serious risk of harm. Protection of personal information and personal privacy is of fundamental importance, not only for the rights of individuals, but also as we now know, for the preservation of a strong democracy.”

Researcher Dr Aleksandr Kogan and his company GSR used a personality quiz to harvest the Facebook data of up to 87 million people. Some of this data was shared with London-based Cambridge Analytica. The ICO argued that Facebook did not do enough to protect users’ information.

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