Facebook Privacy Issue: Senator Schumer Seeks FTC guidelines for Social Networks

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Facebook Privacy issue has blown out of proportions, as U.S. Senator Charles Schumer urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to provide guidelines for social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Schumer’s call to FTC seems inspired by recent big scene over Facebook’s policy to provide data to select third party websites. The new policy allows users to share personal profile information that users previously could restrict access to. User had the ability to determine what information they can chose to share and the information they wanted to keep private. Fundamentally, recent modifications in Facebook strains the relationship between the user and the social networking site.

How private information submitted by online users can be used and disseminated. There new concern that changes in policy have compromised the very same data you probably thought was private.

Lacne Ulanoff of pcmag.com, says “”You haven’t locked down where you live, haven’t locked down friends haven’t locked down the internet, haven’t locked down bunch of stuff and that’s a problem.“”

Senator Charles Schumer described social networking sites as the wild west of the Internet. The Senator explained, now all of sudden with rules changing there are lots of things that you may have never wanted to go beyond your family and friends but do.

Schumer asked the Federal Trade Commission to develop guidelines telling social networking sites, how private information can be used. He believes it should be easier and standard practice for users to opt ‘in’  to policies rather than opt ‘out’.

Schumer alleged that the opt out procedure is confusing, unclear and might be hidden.

Facebook maintains it recently announced “several new products and features designed to enhance personalization and promote social activity” stressing none of the changes removed or reduced people’s control over their information.

Lance has gone to great lengths to make sure his private information remains that way and is urging others to do the same.

However, Facebook maintains recently announced several new products and features designed to enhance personalization and promote social activity. They stressed that none of the changes removed or reduced people’s control over their information.

Lance has stretched to great lengths to make sure that his private information remains that way.

Schumer describes the new common interest pages, as the gold mine of marketing data that could be used for spam and potentially scammers. He feels, it’s  important that safeguards are in place that provide users with control over their personal information to ensure they don’t receive unwanted solicitations.

Schumer has requested the chairman of FTC to probe into the privacy disclosures of social networking sites to ensure that they fully disclose the extent to which they share information. He also urged the FTC to offer guidelines for use of private information and prohibit access without users permission.

In order to resolve the privacy issue, Facebook public policy communications manager Andrew Noyes issued a statement that reads

We were surprised by Senator Schumer’s comments and look forward to sitting down with him and his staff to clarify. Facebook’s highest priority is to keep and build the trust of the more than 400 million people who visit our service every month.