Facebook Privacy Under Review Again After EU Criticism
A European data protection group on Wednesday penned a letter to Facebook in which it told the social networking site that its recent privacy changes are "unacceptable".
That Article 29 Working Party, a collection of European data groups, sent letters to 20 social networking sites overall, but singled out Facebook for "fundamentally chang[ing] the default settings on its social-networking platform to the detriment of a user."
The changes have been criticized by consumer groups, members of Congress, and privacy watchdogs because, the groups say, Facebook has not done enough to inform users about how their information is being used.
The Working Party said in its letter that social networks like Facebook need a "default setting in which access to the profile information about the connections of a user is limited to self-selected contacts."
"Any further access, such as by search engines, should be an explicit choice of the user," according to the regulators.
The Working Party also warned third-party developers about using members' personal data. "Providers of social networking sites should be aware that it would be a breach of data protection law if they use personal data of other individuals contained in a user profile for commercial purposes if these other individuals have not given their free and unambiguous consent," the group said.
The letters serve as a follow up to a June 2009 report about social networking from the Working Party and a subsequent hearing in November with three major social networks, including Facebook.
Facebook said it is currently reviewing the Working Party letter.
"While there are many things in their letter we agree on, there are others where we do not, such as around the Party's suggested use of pseudonyms on social networks," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. "Facebook has always been based on a real name culture, and we fundamentally believe this leads to greater accountability and a safer and more trusted environment for our users. There are plenty of places on the Internet where a person can be anonymous — Facebook is not one of them."
Facebook defended its policies, arguing that the company gives "our users granular controls [that] enable each user to customize many individual settings in order to share, or protect, as much information as they feel comfortable with."
"We already enable users to exclude themselves from being indexed by search engines, and recently introduced granular data permissions for applications," Facebook concluded.
To that end, Facebook will also be holding an internal privacy summit of sorts on Thursday to discuss its privacy policies.
"We have an open culture and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest," the Facebook spokesman said.
That Article 29 Working Party, a collection of European data groups, sent letters to 20 social networking sites overall, but singled out Facebook for "fundamentally chang[ing] the default settings on its social-networking platform to the detriment of a user."
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At its f8 developer conference last month, Facebook introduced the concept of an "open graph," which is intended to create a larger, more social Facebook community across the Web. It also introduced "Community Pages" intended to provide information about various topics. The changes have been criticized by consumer groups, members of Congress, and privacy watchdogs because, the groups say, Facebook has not done enough to inform users about how their information is being used.
The Working Party said in its letter that social networks like Facebook need a "default setting in which access to the profile information about the connections of a user is limited to self-selected contacts."
"Any further access, such as by search engines, should be an explicit choice of the user," according to the regulators.
The Working Party also warned third-party developers about using members' personal data. "Providers of social networking sites should be aware that it would be a breach of data protection law if they use personal data of other individuals contained in a user profile for commercial purposes if these other individuals have not given their free and unambiguous consent," the group said.
The letters serve as a follow up to a June 2009 report about social networking from the Working Party and a subsequent hearing in November with three major social networks, including Facebook.
Facebook said it is currently reviewing the Working Party letter.
"While there are many things in their letter we agree on, there are others where we do not, such as around the Party's suggested use of pseudonyms on social networks," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. "Facebook has always been based on a real name culture, and we fundamentally believe this leads to greater accountability and a safer and more trusted environment for our users. There are plenty of places on the Internet where a person can be anonymous — Facebook is not one of them."
Facebook defended its policies, arguing that the company gives "our users granular controls [that] enable each user to customize many individual settings in order to share, or protect, as much information as they feel comfortable with."
"We already enable users to exclude themselves from being indexed by search engines, and recently introduced granular data permissions for applications," Facebook concluded.
To that end, Facebook will also be holding an internal privacy summit of sorts on Thursday to discuss its privacy policies.
"We have an open culture and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest," the Facebook spokesman said.
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