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Google Faces Privacy Audits For Next 20 Years
Hugh Pickens writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Google has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over Buzz, a social blogging service the company introduced through Gmail last year. The deal will require that Google have regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. Buzz drew heavy criticism at launch in February 2010 for a glaring privacy flaw. When users turned it on, it suggested people to follow based on their Gmail contacts list and their most frequent email partners. 'Although Google led Gmail users to believe that they could choose whether or not they wanted to join the network, the options for declining or leaving the social network were ineffective,' says the FTC. Along with the 20 year oversight, the settlement also says that Google is barred from misrepresenting privacy or confidentiality of the user information it collects, Google must obtain user consent before sharing their information with third parties if it changes its privacy policy, and Google must establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program."
I'd suggest the same with facebook too. I'm not too sure the legality of presenting 12 year old with changes to user agreements, misleading games that collect your info, etc.
That would not be a big problem for facebook because you have to be 13 to use facebook.
This is stupid in light of the fact that Facebook is openly hostile to idea of user privacy and Google actually seems to care, at least a little bit.
Unless Facebook answers those questions, there's no transparency, and certainly the claim that it's pretty obvious what they do with people's data is just handwaving and waffling.