Facebook has been facing some heat in Canada for violation of that country’s privacy laws, and tomorrow the Canadian privacy commissioner will announce what the social networking company will be doing to address those concerns.
The issue surrounds retention of customer data even after a user cancels his or her account, which the Canadian privacy commission claims violates the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
There are also apparently concerns regarding how Facebookfacebook
shares user information with third parties, particularly the now almost one million software developers making use of the Facebook application platform.
Though there’s no word yet on what exactly Facebook will do to address the privacy concerns, what is revealed at tomorrow’s press conference could have wider implications for other social networks and services surrounding privacy standards and the usage of customer data. Tamir Israel of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic said he also expects those changes to extend beyond Canadian borders as well and to possibly be implemented Facebook-wide.
Facebook has also informed us they’ll be doing a follow-up after tomorrow’s announcements:
“We will be having a media call tomorrow following the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s press conference. The call will be tomorrow (August 27) at 11:30 AM EDT.”
Do you think keeping customer data after an account is terminated is a violation of privacy? What privacy standards do you think social networks should adopt? Share your comments below.
