Focus at Four: UT Austin expert talks security breach after $1.4B Meta-Texas settlement

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Meta was recently ordered to pay the State of Texas $1.4 billion as part of a data breach lawsuit. Attorney and professor, Dr. Amy Sanders joined First News at Four to explain the severity of the breach.

Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he was able to secure a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta, formerly known as Facebook. The goal was to call out the company’s practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans.

Dr. Amy Sanders, a professor with the University of Texas and licensed attorney, joined First News at Four and told KBTX on Wednesday that the data is particularly personal.

“Our biometric data [is] our fingerprints, our genetic data, maybe our facial features. This is the data that many of us use to secure our devices, and to open our phones or to open our laptops. This is not data that’s historically been publicly available, like your address or your phone number,” Dr. Sanders said.

A main concern of Dr. Sanders’ was how the data was collected without consumer knowledge.

“We’ve seen a lot of data breaches recently, and it’s one thing for somebody to take your credit card information. It’s another thing for people to have access to your genetic data, your fingerprints, or your retinal scans. They can do some really dangerous things with those pieces of information,” warned Dr. Sanders.

This kind of data is being collected in places like airports, the expert revealed.

“I teach a a surveillance class and I tell students all the time, ‘whenever you can opt-out, and you can, you definitely should.’ You should be very careful about who you’re giving access to this data to. Same thing for, for example, DNA companies right, like 23andMe,” Dr. Sanders added.

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