Privacy and consumer groups file FTC complaint against Facebook

Privacy and consumer-protection groups upset with eroding privacy standards on Facebook filed a complaint May 5 with the Federal Trade Commission, charging that the ubiquitous social media site violates consumer protection laws. The filers, which included the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Consumer Federation of America, also sent a letter to Congress.

The accusations not only finger Facebook for leveraging users' private information for commercial purposes, but also claim that the FTC has been lax in defending consumers' rights in an increasingly high-tech world. The organizations asked the FTC to scrutinize Facebook's privacy policies and ramp up security.

"Facebook disclosed users' personal information to Microsoft, Yelp, and Pandora without first obtaining users' consent; Facebook disclosed users' information--including details concerning employment history, education, location, hometown, film preferences, music preferences, and reading preferences--to which users previously restricted access; and Facebook disclosed information to the public even when users elect to make that information available to friends only," states the complaint.

Criticism of how Facebook uses seemingly private information for advertising, with the help of third parties, has been rampant in the months since the company tweaked its privacy policy. The day of the complaint, the social networking site suspended its chat feature due to a security vulnerability which allowed users see friends' private instant messages, according to a report from InformationWeek.

"Setting up a decent system for controlling your privacy on a web service shouldn't be hard. And if multiple blogs are writing posts explaining how to use your privacy system, you can take that as a sign you aren't treating your users with respect, It means you are coercing them into choices they don't want using design principles. That's creepy," argues a columnist from Wired.

For more:
- read the FTC complaint from EPIC (.pdf)
- see this article from InformationWeek
- see this article from Wired
- check out this interactive infographic that charts the evolution of Facebook privacy policy

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