Facebook Defends Privacy Policies
July 27, 2010
| 3:27 PM
Ahead of a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday on online privacy, Facebook's top lobbyist wrote Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., to defend concerns that the social networking site shares user data with third parties without users permission.
In the letter Saturday to Conyers, Facebook Director of Public Policy Tim Sparapani responded to a request from Conyers for information on Facebook's privacy policies and with whom the firm shares user data.
"The question posed in your letter asks whether Facebook shares users' personal information with third parties without the knowledge of users," Sparapani said. "The answer is simple and straightforward: we do not. We have designed our system and policies so that user information is never shared without our users' knowledge."
Sparapani also outlined Facebook's efforts to improve its privacy settings and how it deals with outside parties. On advertisers, he said Facebook "provides advertisers only with anonymous, aggregated data, such as the number of users in a particular state who clicked on a specific ad."
Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan is set to testify before the House Judiciary Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee on Wednesday on privacy issues related to the Internet and social networking sites in particular, while Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor was set to testify Tuesday afternoon at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on online privacy along with representatives from AT&T, Apple and Google.
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