Facebook, FTC settle over privacy ‘deception’ “It is ordered”, says the FTC’s proposed settlement with Facebook, that the social network “shall not misrepresent in any manner … the extent to which it maintains the privacy or security” of its users. And with that order, the battle between the FTC and Facebook has reached a settlement, as was foreshadowed earlier this month …
Any fool knows that technology moves about 300 MPH faster than the law, any legislation and certainly faster than any civil suits (depending on which side FB is on). I'll bet that within 6 months Bitch Boy figures out a technicality that allows FB to keep right on doing what it's doing. Furthermore, what's to keep one of the many members of the facebook overlay network from doing the same damn thing, or just hiring a lobbying firm and work to overturn that decision, legislatively? FFS, the lobbists for Visa basically wrote the latest bankruptcy rules, and have stacked just about everything against the consumer.
FB, like Google, makes money by eliminating/eroding privacy. And while I certainly don't sympathize a whole lot FB users who continue to feed into "the machine", I'm extraordinarily pissed that I am finding cookies files that point back to facebook. I do not, never have and most definitely never will have a facebook account.
If your policy says "we disclose your information to carefully selected ... " etc, then it is a privacy INVASION policy and should be titled as such.
Only if your policy says "we will not under any circumstances disclose ... " is it genuinely a privacy policy.
This is such BS! fb staffers need the threat of jailtime when making deceptive statements. Game platforms have NO FRICKIN' BUSINESS knowing of or having access to email or note or wall contents or counts or contact patterns and friendship/aquaintancy strengths. Idiots, liars, and schemers occupy fb's upper staff, putting that company in peril of a well-deserved lawsuit and government (the responsible piece of government) privacy laws judgements.
And, the thing about removing from our archives the comments de-friended others make on our wall... that is idiocy. If there comes a day when a person vanishes or is murdered or defamed accuses another of making said acts or comments, then an archive proving what the accuser's interactivity was is CRUCIAL in value. FB should at the least remove the defriended or account-closed person's email, but not the comments. It should mask them for those who unfriend/defriend singly or jointly the other, so the general populace of friends and acquaintances cannot see them. But, destroying posts to our archived walls wrecks the continuity. It forces people to take screen captures in case there is a future problem, or if some funny interaction happened and was memorable.
Not EVERY de-friending is contentious. Sometimes, people just remove those they think do not interact enough to call a "friend" or an "acquaintance", yet may not find the person objectionable. This especially may be the case when someone finds it mind-bogglingly maddening to keep 35 extra people around when the list can be culled and compacted to 90 vice 125. But, later, those same people meet and re-friend, and may find that fb deleted FOREVER their past on-wall interactions or continuity of others who interacted on the topic.
FB should ask a de-friending person if the defriending was for unspecified contention or just housecleaning, and whether or not the de-freinder minds his/her comments remaining on the wall of the de-friended. That cannot be hard to do, and it aides in helping people RE-connect if a defriending was spurious or accidental.
fb needs to stop tracking people, and needs to deny platforms any aggregation capabilities (whether by cookies, bots, crawlers, or inter/intra-game activity.
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... "get “express consent” before altering users’ privacy preferences; must prevent access to deleted account material after 30 days; will agree to establish and maintain a privacy program; and will submit to a bi-annual privacy review for the next 20 years."
In other words, they must now do what the law requires anyway.
I'm glad that the FTC is watching over consumers' interests.
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