Stoddart “disappointed” despite improvements
Following three investigations, Canada’s privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, says Facebook has made improvements over the past few years when it comes to the privacy rights of its users, but “still needs to do a better job of considering privacy issues before rolling out new features.”
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has just finished investigating the social media platform’s friend suggestion service, social plug-ins such as its “like” icon, and the authentication practices that confirm the identity of a user.
Stoddart said in a release that Facebook seems to be giving privacy more consideration in some ways, such as giving clearer information to users on some of the ways it handles personal information.
However, “despite these general improvements, we were disappointed that Facebook hadn’t anticipated the widespread privacy concerns that followed the launch of its ‘friend suggestion’ feature,” she said. She said privacy shouldn’t be added as a reaction to negative feedback from users and data protection groups, but that it “must be built in at the front-end.”
This isn’t the first time the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has investigated privacy practices and policies Facebook uses; it also conducted an investigation in 2009.
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada enforces the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
For more background on the results from the investigations, click here.
