Facebook just announced plans to improve their overall privacy policies based on recommendations by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner.
We recently did an article here at Social Media SEO about “Facebook Being Sued Over Privacy Policy“. The case was apparently launched by users who were claiming they should be compensated for the distribution of their personal information to third party applications and advertisers.
What will come of the case has yet to be seen, but one things for sure, Facebook wants to quickly get a handle on this issue over privacy by giving users as much flexibility, freedom of choice, and education over how their information is shared.
Here’s the main changes Facebook will be making (source):
- Updating the Privacy Policy to better describe a number of practices, including the reasons for the collection of date of birth, account memorialization for deceased users, the distinction between account deactivation and deletion, and how its advertising programs work.
- Encouraging users to review their privacy settings to make sure the defaults and selections reflect the user’s preferences.
- Increasing the understanding and control a user has over the information accessed by third-party applications. Specifically, Facebook will introduce a new permissions model that will require applications to specify the categories of information they wish to access and obtain express consent from the user before any data is shared. In addition, the user will also have to specifically approve any access to their friends’ information, which would still be subject to the friend’s privacy and application settings.