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FTC accepts settlement with Facebook over privacy violations

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The Federal Trade Commission said Friday it has accepted a final settlement with Facebook Inc. that resolves charges the company deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, but then repeatedly allowed it to be shared and made public.

According to the complaint, Facebook has collected extensive profile information about its users. This includes mandatory information, such as name, gender, email address and birthday; and optional information, such as interests and political and religious views. It also has collected other information that is based on a user's activities on the site, including friends, photos and videos.

Facebook's central privacy pages and profile privacy pages have links to “applications,” “apps” or “applications and websites” that when clicked, have taken users to pages containing “friends' apps settings,” which would allow users to restrict the information that their friends' apps could access, according to the complaint.

However, in many instances, these links “have failed to disclose that a user's choices made through profile privacy settings have been ineffective against friends' apps,” said the complaint.

The FTC said in its statement, "The settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including by giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers' information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an independent third party.”

The settlement was approved in a 3-1-1 vote, with Commissioner Thomas J. Roach voting against the settlement and another not participating.

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The three commissioners who voted in favor of the settlement, issued a statement on behalf of the FTC that said in part, the “consent order in In re Facebook Inc. that we approve today advances the privacy interests of the nearly one billion Facebook users around the world by requiring the company to live up to its promises and submit to privacy audits.

“Notably, Facebook will be subject to civil penalties of up to $16,000 for each violation of the order. We intend to monitor closely Facebook's compliance with the order and will not hesitate to seek civil penalties for any violations.

However, Commissioner Roach's dissenting statement said in part, “while I hope that the majority is correct in their assertion that the consent order covers the deceptive practices of Facebook as well as the applications (“apps”) that run on the Facebook platform, it is not clear to me that it does.

“In particular, I am concerned that the order may not unequivocally cover all representations made in the Facebook environment (while a user is “on Facebook”) relating to the deceptive information sharing practices of apps about which Facebook knows or should know.”

A Facebook spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

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