More privacy promised on Facebook

Zuckerberg says company creates two new corporate privacy officer positions to oversee Facebook products and policy.

Facebook has settled complaints that it disregarded its users’ privacy, agreeing to establish a raft of measures to better protect its 800 million members’ data.

The settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday will require Facebook to obtain its users’ consent for certain changes to privacy settings and subject Facebook to 20 years of independent audits. The deal comes as Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social networking company, is said to be gearing up for a massive $10 billion initial public offering next year.

“I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes,” co-founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a lengthy post on the company’s official blog on Tuesday. He said a few “high-profile” mistakes, such as changes to the service’s privacy policy two years ago, “have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.”

To ensure that Facebook did a better job, Zuckerberg said the company had created two new corporate privacy officer positions to oversee Facebook products and policy.

In its complaint, the FTC said that Facebook had repeatedly violated laws against deceptive and unfair practices. For example, it said Facebook promised users that it would not share personal information with advertisers, but it did.

Also, the company had failed to warn users that it was changing its website in December 2009 so that certain information that users had designated as private, such as their “Friends List,” would be made public, the FTC said.

Chris Conley, policy attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said the settlement “makes it clear that companies can’t simply change the rules without asking users’ permission.”

But he said that to keep pace with new technology, there was a need for new laws and tools.

“We shouldn’t have to struggle with complicated and constantly shifting privacy settings just to keep control of our own personal information,” Conley said.

Facebook, which has more than 800 million users, has often been criticised for its privacy practices since its founding in a Harvard dorm room in 2004.

Earlier this year, the company came under fire for practices related to its use of facial recognition technology to automatically identify people appearing in the photos that are shared on the service.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2011.