Facebook has ’serious privacy gaps’: report
p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- Facebook must take greater responsibility for personal information in its care, says Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s federal privacy commissioner.
Announcing the results of an investigation into Fa$ebook’s privacy policies and practices, “we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates,” she says in a statement.
Her investigation followed complaints by the CIPPIC (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic) after students carried out a detailed study of the advertising site’s practices with a particular focus on privacy issues as they relate to Canadian law.
Says Stoddardt »»»
An overarching concern was that, although Facebook provides information about its privacy practices, it is often confusing or incomplete. For example, the “account settings” page describes how to deactivate accounts, but not how to delete them, which actually removes personal data from Facebook’s servers.
The Privacy Commissioner’s report recommends more transparency, to ensure that the social networking site’s nearly 12 million Canadian users have the information they need to make meaningful decisions about how widely they share personal information.
The investigation also raised significant concerns around the sharing of users’ personal information with third-party developers creating Facebook applications such as games and quizzes. (There are more than 950,000 developers in some 180 countries.) Facebook lacks adequate safeguards to effectively restrict these outside developers from accessing profile information, the investigation found.
Changes recommended by the report included technological measures to ensure developers are only able to access the user information, “actually required to run a specific application,” and, “also to prevent the disclosure of personal information of any of the user’s friends who are not themselves signing up for an application”.
The investigation also found Facebook has a policy of, “indefinitely keeping the personal information of people who have deactivated their accounts a violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s private-sector privacy law,” says the privacy commissioner, going on:
“The law is clear that organizations must retain personal information only for as long as is necessary to meet appropriate purposes.”
Recommendations included the adoption of a retention policy whereby personal information in deactivated accounts is deleted after a reasonable length of time.
Stoddart’s statement continues »»»
Facebook has agreed to adopt many of the recommendations stemming from the Privacy Commissioner’s investigation or, in some cases, has proposed reasonable alternatives to the measures recommended. However, there remain a number of recommendations that Facebook has not yet agreed to implement.
“We urge Facebook to implement all of our recommendations to further enhance their site, ensure they are in compliance with privacy law, and ultimately show themselves as models of privacy,” says Assistant Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who led the investigation on behalf of the Office.
“Social networking sites can be a wonderful way to connect. They help us keep up with friends and share ideas and information with people around the globe. It is important for these sites to be in compliance with the law and to maintain users’ trust in how they collect, use and disclose our personal information.”
The privacy commissioner will, “review after 30 days the actions Facebook takes to comply with the recommendations,” it says, noting Stoddart has the power to go to federal court to, “seek to have her recommendations enforced”.
Click here for a detailed report on the Facebook investigation.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
statement – Facebook needs to improve privacy practices, investigation finds, July 16, 2009
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