Facebook Announces Privacy Improvements

Aug 31, 2009

On August 27, 2009, Facebook announced plans to further improve people’s control over their information and enable them to make more informed choices about their privacy. These improvements will include new notifications, additions to Facebook’s Privacy Policy, and technical changes designed to give people more transparency and control over the information they provide to third-party applications.

Specific changes Facebook will be making:

• 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.