Facebook Privacy Changes Still Needed

by Katy Murcutt - Paralegal

28 May 2010, filed under Ecommerce

Social networking website Facebook announced its new privacy policy on Wednesday in response to recent criticism that the privacy settings were inadequate to protect users personal information.

In light of the recent changes, privacy advocates have stated that while the changes are an improvement, Facebook still needs to continue to adapt its privacy policy to prevent sensitive information from being accessible to the world wide web.

The US Electronic Frontier Foundation has supported the opinion of privacy advocates by stating that the changes that have been made are good but will still require further amending to ensure that user’s personal data is protected.

The issue at hand is Facebooks lack of control to users as, although they have simplified the privacy settings to make them more user friendly, they have not changed the privacy settings themselves. The result of this means that user’s personal information is available to any person on the internet as they are not adequately safeguarded by the social networking sites default privacy settings.

The problem with the current privacy settings is that users can only choose between sharing no information with public to sharing all information with the public. In essence, there is not control in the strictest sense due to the all or nothing approach undertaken by Facebook administrators.

Privacy International UK has expressed frustration at the lack of change made to the privacy settings on the website.