Facebook Privacy

Facebook has been forced to give its users more control over how much of their personal information is shared with the social networking site and the makers of the games and quizzes they download onto their profile pages, in the latest move to increase online consumer protection.

The move, which comes in response to complaints from Canadian privacy officials, is part of a growing trend to clamp down on the use of personal data by social networking sites and the software developers who use them to distribute their applications. It could have repercussions for other sites such as MySpace and even Twitter.

As consumers are given more and more power over the use of their information, it reduces the potential ability of companies such as Facebook to make money supplying that information to advertisers. In the past, the company has come under fire for its own use of users' information to target advertising.

After a year-long review from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Facebook has agreed to give users more information about how it uses their data for advertising, and to change the default settings of its privacy controls – which many users leave unaltered – to better reflect users' preferences.

Now Facebook has accepted this needs tightening up. The changes, which Facebook will introduce over the next year, will affect all 250 million Facebook users worldwide, including those in the UK.

Application developers will have to specify which categories of data the software needs, so users can decide accordingly. Specifically, the application will have to tell users why it wants very sensitive information, such as date of birth. Users will also have to specifically approve any access Facebook applications have to their friends' information. Such access still would be subject to the friend's privacy and application settings.

Facebook will update its privacy policy so it provides users with more information about how to delete their accounts and how its advertising programs work.

The Canadian privacy commissioner is happy with changes made by Facebook, following an investigation of the site's policies last year.

Jennifer Stoddart said the social network had vastly improved the sharing of personal information with third-party developers.

She believes that Facebook now provides users with clear information about privacy policies.

In May the social network made wide-ranging changes to its site. These changes came about partly as a result of pressure from privacy commissioners and campaigners around the world.

One of the major concerns of the Canadian commissioner was the way Facebook gave third-party developers virtually unrestricted access to Facebook users' personal information. The new model means developers must inform users of the data they need and seek consent to use it.

We're also pleased that Facebook has developed simplified privacy settings and has implemented a tool that allows users to apply a privacy setting to each photo or comment they post, said Stoddart.

Imagine my surprise to see a couple of porn sites this morning using Facebook Connect.

So how are we going to manage our privacy when we hit porn sites. Are we ready to see what your particular taste is in the industry that cannot be mentioned or promoted on social media?

So exactly how is Facebook going to let us screen our timeline before we really get going and dive deeper into the things that we really do not want our friends and neighbors to know about.

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Visits to any site that has Facebook features such as 'like buttons' will be recorded on your own page unless you take positive action to turn it off, somewhere in the complex labyrinth of Facebook options.