You know all of those Facebook quizzes and causes and snowball fights and other lists – “25 Random Things” etc? Did you know that when you sign up for these applications you are giving the application developer access to all of your profile information? Facebook is notoriously fast and loose with your data, which is why I ignore all requests for causes, lists etc. The simple truth is that you don’t know what Facebook is doing with your data, and they won’t tell you.
Not any more, thanks to our neighbors in the Great White North.
The Canadian Government has muscledFacebook into making some significant changes to the way that your data is managed. This is good new for your Privacy, but it emphasizes how little control you have over what happens to your data once you hit the enter key.
The basics of the changes (to be implemented over the next year) are:
1) Applications will have to tell you what data they want and you will have to give them explicit permission to use the data. Developers will have to tell you how they will use the data too.
2) Account removal – as is stands now, you don’t know what happens to your account when you “deactivate” it on Facebook. You might think that your data is removed, but is isn’t. Facebook has agreed to give you the option to deactivate or to delete your account. Unclear what will happen to data already sent to others (think birthday information on other peoples calendars) so we’ll see what happens here.
3) Privacy for Dead People – After you die, your account does not necessarily go away. Facebook will update is Privacy Policy to explain what happens when it’s owner passes away.
There are still many problems with Facebook, and there is still litigation pending in the US courts regarding how your data is being used by Facebook at others. For more information on this, have a look at the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s website, http://epic.org/. There is a section on Facebook that outlines their concerns, and it’s a great read.
The lesson here is be VERY careful with your information. I don’t want to be Polly-Anna-ish here, but you can’t be too careful. Don’t make it easy for people to steal your identity!
