Consumer Law

Consumer and Privacy Advocates Ask the FTC to Go After Facebook

By Brian Wolfman

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and more than a dozen other consumer and privacy advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Facebook regularly violates its users privacy rights by providing users' personal information to third parties. The complaint claims that Facebook is committing a variety of unfair and deceptive acts and practices in violation of section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and asks the FTC to force Facebook to clean up its act. The complaint is available here. The first two paragraphs of the complaint summarize the allegations:

This complaint concerns material changes to privacy settings made by Facebook, the largest social network service in the United States, that adversely impact the users of the service. Facebook now discloses personal information to the public that Facebook users previously restricted. Facebook now discloses personal information to third parties that Facebook users previously did not make available. These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook?s own representations. These business practices are Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices, subject to review by the Federal Trade Commission (the ?Commission?) under section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The following business practices are unfair and deceptive under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act: Facebook disclosed users? personal information to Microsoft, Yelp, and Pandora without first obtaining users? consent; Facebook disclosed users? information?including details concerning employment history, education, location, hometown, film preferences, music preferences, and reading preferences?to which users previously restricted access; and Facebook disclosed information to the public even when users elect to make that information available to friends only.

U.S. PIRG's Consumer Blog discusses the complaint here.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on May 06, 2010 (boomark / email).