If you are a social networking consumer, then you need to know how to protect your online privacy. Online privacy has become somewhat of an after-thought for many social sites. However, many people are finding out that businesses not adhering to proper privacy practices and keeping their promises will find themselves in the courts and dishing out a lot of money in fines, up to $16,000 for each violation. Case in-point, “Facebook”. Recently, Facebook has settled with the FTC that it failed to keep customer’s privacy promises (FTC, 2011). In this blog post, I will be discussing three facts from this news release regarding consumer privacy for social networking sites.
The information you give to online social sites has already been used or it is currently being used in ways which you do not know. You should investigate and understand their rules. These companies may change the rules without you even knowing how those changes affect you. Such as Facebook in December 2009, allowing private Friend lists being made public without warning any customer beforehand. This may not sound like a big deal because it is only a ‘Friends List’. That is not the point. If a company can just arbitrarily change the rules and do with your information as they wish, then do you really want to do business with that company? I would say, “Definitely not!” What does that say about their integrity? They broke their promise to what was already private to now be public information. It begs the question, “What else have they done?”
What if a social networking company promised to not share your information to third party advertisers and that promise was broken? This is another malpractice Facebook agreed to settle with the FTC on charges that they deceived consumers their information was safe yet deceivingly made public. Whenever you sign up for a social networking site, read the fine print. Know what you are signing up for and how your information will be used by the company. Copy and paste the privacy information in a text document for your safe-keeping. You never know when that will come in handy. It would be nice if important information in Privacy Act statements were color coded or bold or something to indicated how that site will affect your privacy.
Within Facebook there are a number of applications (apps) which a person can interact with their lists. From Farmville to birthday notifications, did you know that using those applications gave those application companies access to your data? It was all shared with those third party vendors. It is absolutely ludicrous that third party applications required your data and information inside a service site and each of them have a different privacy policy. Facebook promised to restrict that information of personal data to those application companies, but did not and information was given to them which was over and above what was required.
The settlement bars Facebook from making false misrepresentations about consumers’ privacy or security of information, requiring a consumer’s affirmative express consent before enacting any changes, prevent anyone from access a user’s account after it has been closed for more than 30 days, security audits by an outside, independent party every 2 years, and have a comprehensive security and privacy program for all their services and third party vendors who work with them (FTC, 2011). Do you think these will help and set the standard for all online sites? Personally, I do not think it can be fully policed until a company has a lawsuit against them.
Let me know your thoughts!
FTC, (2011, November 29). Facebook settles FTC charges that it deceived consumers by failing to keep privacy promises. Retrieved from http://ftc.gov/opa/2011/11/privacysettlement.shtm