Groups Call On Facebook To Make More Privacy Changes
Ten privacy and civil liberties groups urged Facebook Wednesday to take additional steps to fix lingering privacy issues they say still exist with the social networking site.
In an open letter Wednesday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the groups said they are "glad to see that Facebook has taken steps in the past weeks to address some of its outstanding privacy problems. However, we are writing to urge you to continue to demonstrate your commitment to the principle of giving users control over how and with whom they share by taking" additional steps.
Among the other steps the groups urged Facebook to take include allowing users to decide which applications can access their personal Facebook information; allow users to control all the information they can share on Facebook including name, gender and profile picture; make it easier for users who want to quit Facebook to export their data to other social networking sites; and make instant personalization, a pilot program Facebook launched with partner sites that utilizes a Facebook user's data to target content to them, opt-in by default.
Facebook announced several changes last month in response to complaints from users and lawmakers about the site's privacy policies.
"By addressing these outstanding issues, Facebook can continue to demonstrate its commitment to user privacy," according to the letter signed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California; Center for Democracy and Technology; Center for Digital Democracy, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded by noting that the social networking site won praise for the privacy changes it announced last month. "We plan to continue to make control easy and effective for all the people who use our service and will continue to engage these groups and others in a constructive dialogue about these important issues," he added. (Noyes is the former editor of Tech Daily Dose).
He also offered a point-by-point rebuttal to the additional steps called for by the privacy groups. On the call for allowing users to decide which applications can access their information, Facebook said it would be launching in the coming weeks a new "data permission model" to address such concerns. Noyes also argued that the instant personalization pilot project has been "widely misunderstood. The only information the three partners currently in the program receive from Facebook is information that Facebook users have agreed to share with everyone."
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