Facebook Violates Canadian Privacy Law

Myriad and a number of other readers passed along the news that the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has made a determination that Facebook violates Canadian privacy law in four different respects. Canada has the highest per-capita facebook participation in the world — about a third of the population — according to coverage in The Star. The EU is also expressing similar privacy concerns, though Canada's action "represents the most exhaustive official investigation of Facebook privacy practices anywhere in the world," says Michael Geist. The CBC's coverage spells out the areas of privacy concern, in particular that nearly a million developers of Facebook apps in 180 countries have full access to the entirety of users' private data. Also of concern: Facebook holds on to your data indefinitely after you quit the site. The BBC notes that Facebook is working with the privacy commission to resolve the issues, and quotes a Facebook spokesman thus: "Overall, we are looking for practical solutions that operate at scale and respect the fact that people come to share and not to hide." (Schneier recently blogged about research on "privacy salience," and cited Facebook's practices among others' as practical examples of how social networking sites have learned not to push the privacy issue in users' faces.)

Comments

The answer is pretty simple

[Minion of Eris]

DO NOT RUN ANY APPS!!! Sorry for shouting, but I have been saying this to people for years now (since the first time i read the terms for FaceBook apps). I am not knocking FB as a tool in and of itself, in fact I am very grateful to them for letting my daughter find me after 16 years of seperation (true story - she searched my name and sent me a message) but come on, they state clearly that if you want to plant a garden (or whatever) the developer gets to see all of your info. just Don't Do It. thanks for the rant-space.