Following the news that Facebook is being hit with a $5 billion fine over its handling of consumer data, the Federal Trade Commission published its formal complaint against the social media giant.

The complaint comes after a yearlong investigation by the FTC, and alleges that Facebook violated a 2012 order by being deceptive when it comes to its privacy settings and disclosures.

The complaint accuses Facebook of failing to adequately protect consumer privacy.

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Following the news that Facebook is being hit with a $5 billion fine over its handling of consumer data, the Federal Trade Commission published its formal complaint against the social media giant, marking the conclusion of its yearlong investigation.

The complaint alleges that Facebook violated a 2012 order from the Commission by being deceptive when it comes to the way it protects consumer privacy and handles consumer data. The document breaks down the specific features, settings, and disclaimers found on Facebook's desktop website and mobile app that it's found to have been problematic from a privacy standpoint.

Among the biggest ways in which Facebook was found to have violated the 2012 order was in the way the social media company represents the control users have over their data and the extent at which it's available to third parties. Between December 2012 and April 2014, Facebook said users could limit the amount of personal information shared with friends through controls such as the Privacy Settings page, Privacy Shortcuts, and profile settings page. But Facebook did not limit its sharing of third-party information with app developers based on those settings, the filing notes. This, the complaint says, puts Facebook in violation of the Commission Order.

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Around the time that Facebook resolved the FTC's original complaint in 2012, the company added a disclaimer to its Privacy Settings page. In addition to informing users that they can control who they share status updates, photos, and information with using its inline audience selector tool, the disclaimer said the following: "Remember: the people you share with can always share your information with others, including apps." However, Facebook removed this disclaimer roughly four months after the order became effective, as the document shows by providing screenshots of Facebook's desktop website.

The filing also points out that Facebook did not require third-party developers to request permission from friends of app users to access their Facebook data. Rather, Facebook only required the app user, not his or her friends, to provide permission. This gave third-party developers access to a trove of data, including friends' birthdays, bio, check-ins, fitness activity, likes, interest, music activity, relationships, photos, and much more, as outlined on the eighth page of the document.

Not only had Facebook been sharing this data without explicit permission from the affected friends of users, but it also was not clear about how to opt out of such sharing, the document says. The affected friend would have to navigate to Facebook's App Settings page and choose the "Apps others use" setting. But one of the underlying problems with this system was that most Facebook users wouldn't think to change that setting in the first place if they didn't know that their information was being shared, and if they weren't using external apps with Facebook.

After Facebook publicly said in 2014 that it would no longer allow external app developers to access a user's friends' data, it continued to allow millions of third-party app makers to access such data for at least another year. Some of the whitelisted developers that Facebook continued to share such data with had access to friends' information until 2018, says the filing.

Facebook also failed to implement and maintain a reasonable privacy program as the 2012 order mandated, a step that the complaint says is vitally important given that millions of developers were given access to data about Facebook users and their friends. While Facebook claimed that it had implemented controls and procedures to address such privacy risks, the company did not screen developers or their apps before giving them access to user data. As an example, the complaint notes that although Facebook checks that third party apps have a link to a privacy policy, it doesn't review that privacy policy to make sure that it complies with Facebook's policies.

The filing also points to Facebook's use of facial recognition as being another area in which it violates the 2012 order. While Facebook had indicated to users that they would have to opt in to facial recognition to identify people in photos and videos, the feature was turned on by default for some users who still had Facebook's Tag Suggestions Setting.

In addition to being in violation of the 2012 order, the complaint also says the social media giant violated a section of the FTC Act by failing to clearly disclose that Facebook would use phone numbers gathered for security purposes for advertising purposes.

The complaint comes as the FTC announced on Wednesday that it had slapped the social networking giant with a $5 billion fine over the way the company handles consumer data.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a public statement on his Facebook page that the firm will make "structural changes" to the way it operates and builds products to further prioritize privacy. "We have a responsibility to protect people's privacy," Zuckerberg wrote on Wednesday. "We already work hard to live up to this responsibility, but now we're going to set a completely new standard for our industry."

Read more: Alongside a $5 billion fine, the US government just imposed a bunch of restrictions on what Facebook can and can't do: Here's the full list

See below for the full filing.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that the filing was a new lawsuit brought against Facebook. This story has since been updated to reflect that it is the FTC's formal complaint as part of its settlement with Facebook, which was announced on Wednesday morning.