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Facebook Settles With FTC, Admits Privacy Violations
Animats writes
"Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The settlement is soft on Facebook; there are no fines or criminal penalties. According to the FTC, in December 2009, Facebook 'changed its website so certain information that users may have designated as private – such as their Friends List – was made public. Facebook didn't warn users that this change was coming, or get their approval in advance.' Among the other complaints (PDF), 'Facebook represented that third-party apps that users' installed would have access only to user information that they needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of users' personal data – data the apps didn't need.'"
The settlement demands that Facebook avoid any new deceptive privacy claims, and also that users must give explicit permission for changes to be made to their privacy preferences. Facebook will be audited every two years for the next two decades to make sure they're holding up their end of the settlement. In a lengthy statement on Facebook's blog, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that they'd made mistakes.
Not only did they slap Facebook for privacy violations, but also Google a few months ago. They IMO are the two largest privacy violators on the internet.
Now, maybe someone at Facebook will read this and notice: Please fix the chat so that if I have set it offline, it will not quickly popup me as online and then back offline when I later visit Facebook. It seems like a stupid bug. It also leads to stupid private messages (especially from my mother -_-) when I just want to check updates.
Other than that, Facebook has done a pretty good job. It's still the most useful social network on the internet, and I doubt Google+ will be ever able to compete with it.
On the one hand, good on the FTC. Especially for the followup reviews.
On the other hand, this once again proves that it's far easier to just do something contractually and ethically questionable yet massively profitable and wiggle out of the consequences later (especially if you've the money for a squadron of lawyers) than to do things above the board from the get go.
Check your premises.
When will people get it?
Because they don't believe they did wrong. They really believe they made mistakes, the first of which was "get caught."
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I wouldn't trust Zuckerberg to watch my dog and yet 100s of millions of people entrust his company with their most personal information. Odd, that.
10 billion isn't cool. You know whats cool? Invading privacy.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
What a bunch of wussies.
Facebook broke the law. As punishment, Facebook has to promise not to do it again, and be monitored to make sure it keeps its promise. I guess Facebook is only seven years old, and since companies have the same rights as people (apparently), I guess it makes sense they are given punishment befitting a person of that age.
In Facebook's case those audits should probably be about once every two months... There was a new violation (location tracking) on the iOS mobile app just this week.
... Very profitable mistakes.
Facebook represented that third-party apps that users' installed would have access only to user information that they needed to operate.
Who gets to decide what user information the app needs? The app developer, of course. And how do they make the claim that they need certain information? By trying to access it.
For example, if I write an app that checks your SSN against a database of known compromised SSN's in order to alert you if yours has been compromised, the app needs your SSN, doesn't it? But really, what's the difference between this app and one that grabs your SSN in order to attempt to steal your identity? Both apps "need" your SSN, and Facebook's claim doesn't exclude the latter.
So Facebook's claim that third-party apps would only have access to information they need is therefore equivalent to claiming that third party apps would only have access to information that they ask for. In other words, utterly meaningless. It's a weaselly statement that tricks users into thinking Facebook is protecting its users privacy, when really they're doing nothing of the sort.
Every two years for two decades!?!?!??!
I bet all my private information that Facebook won't be around in 20 years. And 2 years is enough time to cause a ridiculous amount of damage when you have a billion users.
I bet they're quaking in their repentant boots.
There is no such thing as privacy on the internet. If you have a photo or piece of information or whatever, that you're not prepared to potentially let everyone see, don't post it online. Ever.
Who else thinks that facebook knew they would get in trouble for this, yet realized they would make more money by profiting from it in the mean-time and only changing their policy once officially caught? (Ford Pinto-style).
So, nothing happened. Nothing to see here, move along.
FB is like AOL was in the 90s: A ubiquitous, shitty walled garden that provided you access to a bunch of similar low tech jerks and annoying worthless adds, and like AOL, it will fade into nothingness when the whole 'social networking' craze dies down.
If I could short FB stock over a twenty year period, I would make a killing.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Facebook made mistakes. But one mistake *I* didn't make was putting my data on facebook.
When I actually wind up needing a social site, I will put up on only the data that is actually required to meet the need. Until then, it is nothing more than a way for me to give total strangers potentially-abusable information about myself.
But for the unwashed masses, it is all shiny, so consequences be damned.
From Mark Zuckerberg's post:
As a matter of fact, privacy is so deeply embedded in all of the development we do that .....
....These privacy principles are written very deeply into our code.
You've gotta admit, the guy does have a good sense of humor ;P
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
I just read this same article on a local news site. Over on the right were several links to other stories on the same site in a box called "Facebook social plugin". When I hovered the mouse over those links, my browser showed me that they were "safe", that is, that clicking on them wouldn't cause me to leave the page. However, when I actually clicked on them, I discovered that Facebook had circumvented my browser's safety feature to hide the fact that those links actually routed me to www.facebook.com first. The FTC's job has barely even begun.
Facebook will never hold to privacy agreements OR to FTC/court rulings, because it is far too profitable to break those agreements or rulings. After all, there are no real consequences for doing so. Given that Zuckerberg holds all of Facebook's users in open,. sneering contempt (in the same way that many ./ commenters do), what possible motive would he have to comply? It's not like the FTC is ever going to touch him.
Or, to restate: there is a word for law enforcement without teeth. That word is "bitch". The FTC is Zuckerberg's bitch; they've conclusively proved it.
Assholes remain assholes until there is a credible threat of physical violence; nothing else motivates them. Robber barons remain robber barons unless there is a credible threat of having everything they own seized and sold; nothing else motivates them. Right now, there is no credibility to anything that the FTC says, so nothing's changed.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
"Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that they'd made mistakes."
Translation: "We got caught"
"The settlement is soft on Facebook; there are no fines or criminal penalties."
Translation: "We paid the FTC boss off or our backers are too powerful to screw with"
"Facebook will be audited every two years for the next two decades to make sure they're holding up their end of the settlement."
Translation: "We expect to get bought off every 2 years if you want us to cover for you"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Are you listening, Wikileaks, Manning? The USA has updated its common-law penalties for sharing and publishing information that you have agreed to keep private.
Now do better next time, or we'll politely ask you to do better next time again!
Walls work both ways.
Have Oracle buy Facebook, and call OraBook ... or Oracle, since Larry's still in charge. Pair those two up, and then we can have a company that EVERYONE hates.
As always...
Who doesn't have a Facebook account. I canceled it due to this incident.
and Zukerberg [aka Sudkerburg ... a Gay psudonym].
So, on Obama's Order the FCC ChairMan ... French Kissed and Tel on Zukerberg and Facebook.
The FCC ChairMan's love for Obama runs deep.
I find it the ultimate irony that the Government is going after Facebook for privacy issues, while all the time attempting to erode our privacy themselves.