Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission brought charges against Facebook for engaging in “deceptive behavior” when changing its privacy settings. Now, Facebook is prepared to make a deal.
FTC charges originate from changes the social networking site made to its privacy settings in 2009, which reportedly made certain information public by default, including user names, city of residence, profile pictures, fan pages and friend lists. Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been highly criticized for their “questionable” privacy policies, which critics say have let popular applications, such as Farmville and Mafia Wars share user information with third parties, as well as track users across the Internet even after they’ve left Facebook.
The proposed settlement calls for Facebook to get consent before making “material retroactive changes,” and submit to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. Facebook must also permit users to “opt-in” to certain privacy changes, instead of “opt-out” as has been the previous case. The deal is awaiting approval from the FTC.
Zuckerberg has long claimed that privacy is dead. Because he personally does not mind being an open book, he has erroneously speculated that everyone else should also share in his belief. But the FTC was forced to step in following an unprecedented amount of consumer complaints, which have already positively affected changes in Facebook’s current privacy settings.
