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New Privacy Rights Violations at Facebook -- the New York Times reports

By Andis Kaulins

It seems like a never-ending string of violations of privacy rights by social networking platforms.

Jenna Wortham at the New York Times reports on the newest Facebook incursion on privacy rights at Glitch Brings New Worries About Facebook?s Privacy:

"On Wednesday, users discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations."

The newest "glitch" comes on the heels of previous privacy rights violations at Facebook which suggest that no user should put sensitive information of any kind into the hands of social networking portals. As Wortham writes:

"Over the last few months, Facebook has introduced changes that encourage users to make their photos and other information accessible to anyone on the Internet.... Facebook began prompting users to link information in their profile pages, like their hobbies and hometowns, in a way that makes that information public.

That last change prompted the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group, to file a complaint on Wednesday with the Federal Trade Commission.

?Facebook continues to manipulate the privacy settings of users and its own privacy policy so that it can take personal information provided by users for a limited purpose and make it widely available for commercial purposes,? Marc Rotenberg, the group?s executive director, said in a letter to the commission."

Read the whole article here.

Full post as published by LawPundit on May 09, 2010 (boomark / email).