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FTC worried about Facebook’s privacy policy

by on12 September 2013



Violates 2011 agreements

The US FTC is looking at changes to Facebook privacy policy to determine whether they violate a 2011 agreement with federal regulators. The problem is the "Tag Suggest" feature that would use facial recognition technology to match faces in photos with public profile features, part of a broad set of privacy changes the social networking giant announced on August 29.

FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan said regulators would study the changes as part of the government's oversight of Facebook's privacy practices. In 2011 after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said sorry for privacy cock-ups and pledged to obtain users' permission before sharing their personal data. He added that the commission had no reason to believe that the company had violated its 2011 agreement, but it needed to be sure.

Facebook posted an update to its data use policies on the company website on August 29 to explain how users' personal information is used by advertisers and third-party applications. The new policy proposal came days after the company finalised a $20 million class-action settlement related to how Facebook displayed its users' "likes" and pictures in its ads products. Facebook insists that it was in full compliance with the FTC and that its new policy did not grant the company expanded privileges in how it used personal data.

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