by DAN CALLOWAY
Published 21 December 2009 @ 20:26 UCT
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA – Privacy groups have asked regulators and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate their claims that recent changes in how Facebook treats customer data violates federal consumer protection laws.
The complaint, which was filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) stipulates that recent changes in Facebook’s privacy settings significantly impact the users’ ability to control the privacy of their data by allowing information that was previously controlled by the user to be placed into the public forum without their consent. If the user wishes to restrict who has access to this data, they must now reset their privacy settings. User data that is available to the public by default includes the user’s profile picture, current city of residence, gender, and friends and fan pages. Facebook made this dramatic change in user privacy settings in an apparent attempt to force users to share more customer data with all users on the Internet rather than restricting certain data to only friends and family members. This is viewed by many as a means by Facebook to compete with other social networking sites, such as Twitter and MIXX.
The complaint is asking the FTC to determine to what extent these new privacy settings negatively impact the consumer’s privacy and safety, and is asking the FTC to require Facebook to return its privacy settings to previously agreed-upon conditions.
EPIC, in its complaint, has been joined by a coalition of privacy interest groups, including the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Library Association, and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
EPIC also alledges that the new privacy settings instituted by Facebook violates user expectations, diminishes user privacy, and contradicts the site’s own user agreements with Facebook.
I will continue to follow this story in the future and let you know whether the FTC files any official action against Facebook or if fines are imposed. In the meantime, I strongly urge anyone who has a Facebook account to visit the Privacy Settings section on the site and reconfigure it to protect your data rather than relying on previous settings that you may have already enacted on the site.
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