Following an investigation into the privacy policies and practices of popular social network Facebook.com by the Canadian government, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has determined that Facebook does not meet Canada's privacy legislation requirements.
According to the recent ruling, Facebook must take greater responsibility for the personal information in its care in order to comply with Canadian privacy law. The investigation identified several areas where Facebook needs to better address privacy issues. Some of the suggestions included:
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Clearer Privacy Practices: The investigation found that the information Facebook provides about its privacy practices is often confusing or incomplete. For example, the “account settings” page describes how to deactivate accounts, but not how to delete them, which actually removes personal data from Facebook’s servers.
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More Transparency: The investigation found that Facebook needs to ensure that the social networking site’s nearly 12 million Canadian users have the information they need to make meaningful decisions about how widely they share personal information.
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Safeguards Against Outside Developers: The investigation found that Facebook lacks adequate safeguards to effectively restrict the more than 950,000 outside third-party developers in some 180 countries from accessing profile information.
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Releasing Data From Deactivated Accounts: The investigation also found that Facebook has a policy of indefinitely keeping the personal information of people who have deactivated their accounts, a violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s private-sector privacy law.
At the urging of Canadian authorities to ensure that they are in compliance with privacy law and ultimately show themselves as models of privacy, Facebook has agreed to adopt many of the recommendations stemming from the Privacy Commissioner’s investigation and has already simplified its privacy settings after calling them too complex.
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