Twitter faces possible FTC fine afters users' email addresses and phone numbers were used for targeted ads

Twitter could be slapped with a fine of up to $250 million from the FTC.

The social media company in a new regulatory filing says that it recently received a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission over its "use of phone number and/or email address data provided for safety and security purposes for targeted advertising" from 2013 to 2019, CNN reports.

Twitter last year apologized over the fact that users' phone numbers and email addresses "may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes" when they were provided to the company for security reasons, e.g. so that users could turn on two-factor authentication. This might have violated a 2011 privacy agreement between Twitter and the FTC, The New York Times reports.

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"We're very sorry this happened and are taking steps to make sure we don't make a mistake like this again," Twitter said last year while assuring users that "no personal data was ever shared externally with our partners or any other third parties."

In the regulatory filing, Twitter says it could face an FTC fine of between $150 million and $250 million. News of the possible FTC fine comes after Twitter last month apologized to users over a huge hack that took over high-profile accounts in a Bitcoin scam.

"Last week was a really tough week for all of us at Twitter, and we feel terrible about the security incident that negatively affected the people we serve and their trust in us," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said.