Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg are facing legal problems on multiple fronts these days. There's the class-action complaint alleging lax security measures increased users' risk of identity theft, following the 2018 hack of 50 million user accounts.1,2

Then there's the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probe into Facebook's compliance with a 2011 consent agreement to safeguard users' personal information, which has been ongoing for the past year.

According to Fortune Magazine,3 if the company is found to have violated the agreement, fines amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars may be levied. According to a March 4, 2019, report by Wired,4 the U.S. House Judiciary Committee is also conducting an investigation looking for links between Cambridge Analytica, Russia, President Trump and WikiLeaks.

In addition to that, the FTC recently launched a second criminal investigation into the company's controversial data sharing practices. Top executives are also leaving the company — a sign that the rats are fleeing from Facebook's sinking ship.

Among them are Facebook's chief product officer, Chris Fox, who has been with the company for 13 years, and Chris Daniels, vice president of WhatsApp, a position he's held only since May.5,6

FTC Probe No. 1

The first, still ongoing, FTC investigation revolves around the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where it was discovered Facebook allowed a British political consulting firm access to some 87 million Facebook users' data, which was allegedly used in an effort to sway public opinion in the U.S. presidential election. As reported by Fortune last year:7

"In the 2011 case, the agency [FTC] alleged in an eight-count draft complaint that Facebook had broken its promise that users could keep their information on Facebook private.