Thursday, July 22, 2010
Ugg General
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
US senators demand Facebook privacy changes
The senators have called on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, to reverse recent changes to the site that will allow users' information to be shared more widely with third-party websites.
Preferred partners, such as Pandora, Yelp and the new Microsoft Docs service, would be given access to public information on Facebook profiles, such as names, friends lists, and the likes and interests of users. Third-party websites will no longer be obliged to delete this data after 24 hours, and, crucially, Facebook users are opted in to the service automatically, and must actively opt out to avoid sharing their information with other people or companies.
The company has also created a new system whereby 'interests' and other information listed on users' personal profiles are automatically aggregated and shared. Users previously had the option to keep this information private.
“People give these sites their personal information because they assume it will be used to connect them with their friends. But Facebook is taking its users' information, giving it to third parties, and letting them keep it indefinitely. I'm asking Facebook to better protect its users data and make sure that users know who is getting it,” said senator Al Franken.
In their letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the senators said that this problem could be fixed by changing the current 'opt-out' policy to an 'opt-in' one, whereby the default setting would not allow users’ personal information to be shared with third party sites.
Earlier this week, Senator Charles E Schumer asked the FTC to examine the privacy disclosures of social networking sites to ensure that they are not misleading or that they fail to fully disclose the extent to which they share information.
"The default policy should be one of privacy, and users should have to choose to share their information, not the other way around. We hope Facebook will take this simple step to make sure that no one’s personal information will be made public without them fully aware and consenting," said Schumer.
Preferred partners, such as Pandora, Yelp and the new Microsoft Docs service, would be given access to public information on Facebook profiles, such as names, friends lists, and the likes and interests of users. Third-party websites will no longer be obliged to delete this data after 24 hours, and, crucially, Facebook users are opted in to the service automatically, and must actively opt out to avoid sharing their information with other people or companies.
The company has also created a new system whereby 'interests' and other information listed on users' personal profiles are automatically aggregated and shared. Users previously had the option to keep this information private.
“People give these sites their personal information because they assume it will be used to connect them with their friends. But Facebook is taking its users' information, giving it to third parties, and letting them keep it indefinitely. I'm asking Facebook to better protect its users data and make sure that users know who is getting it,” said senator Al Franken.
In their letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the senators said that this problem could be fixed by changing the current 'opt-out' policy to an 'opt-in' one, whereby the default setting would not allow users’ personal information to be shared with third party sites.
Earlier this week, Senator Charles E Schumer asked the FTC to examine the privacy disclosures of social networking sites to ensure that they are not misleading or that they fail to fully disclose the extent to which they share information.
"The default policy should be one of privacy, and users should have to choose to share their information, not the other way around. We hope Facebook will take this simple step to make sure that no one’s personal information will be made public without them fully aware and consenting," said Schumer.
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