Facebook Investigated by Canada for Violation of Privacy Laws
Buzz it
News Flash: Canada’s federal privacy commissioner is investigating Facebook after four students complained it violates Canadian law by disclosing personal information to advertisers without proper consent.
The University of Ottawa law students, some of whom are dedicated Facebook users, allege in a complaint lodged Friday that the social networking Web site has committed 22 violations of the law.
“There’s definitely some significant shortcomings with Facebook’s privacy settings and with their ability to protect users,” said Harley Finkelstein, 24, one of the students behind the complaint.
Facebook has refuted the claims, saying that the complaint ignores key elements of the company’s policy.
“We’ve reviewed the complaint and found it has serious factual errors — most notably its neglect of the fact that almost all Facebook data is willingly shared by users,” Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said Friday in an e-mail.
Or in other words Facebook is pleading Caveat Emptor.
What’s to learn from this? Be careful … be very careful what information you disclose to Social Networks because nothing is private.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Social Networks are NOT blogs. You have no control over your personal information or your content. They are for-profit corporate websites bent on using your info to make them money and they don’t give a hoot about your rights.
Filed under: Blog Ethics, Blog News, Misguided, New Media, Social Media
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Oh boohoo are you kidding me? MySpace has been in and out of court since day 1 and not a damn thing happens.
FACT: Anyone that puts any of their “classified” info on any site like that deserves to have it indexed by Google LOL.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Opening Links: Same Window or New Window - Which Do YOU Prefer?
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When it comes to big business the courts usually follow the money and screw joe public. It’s the great American way.
Caveat Emptor!
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on June 4th, 2008 3:10 pm:
You’re right, the courts won’t do anything about that! Especially because Facebook can hire fancy lawyers who can pull something out of wherever to protect the corporation.
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