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Facebook potentially falls foul of Canadian privacy laws

Facebook has “serious privacy gaps” and must now change its data model to comply with Canadian laws, according to a report issued by the country’s privacy commissioner on Thursday of last week.

This kick in the teeth comes as the world’s largest social network reporting over 250m users, is opening up its applications structure to third parties with its facebook connect application.

Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart explained “Facebook has to be more transparent about telling people what they do with their personal information, how long they keep it, and who is able to use it,”

The Canadians have identified four privacy areas where Facebook needs to implement the changes, of course on the top of the list is the third party application integration issue. If you didn’t know it already Facebook retains your information even after you request to deactivate your account, invitations that you send out to your friends also potentially breach privacy laws in Canada by retaining the email addresses of users who decline the invite.

Facebook now has 30 days to respond and if the company fails to make the suggested changes, the privacy commission can ask to federal courts to enforce their recommendations which I guess could mean restriction of the service or heafty fines in Canada.  I hate to say it but “I told you so” the amount of information held by social networks is only limited by a users activity and as such offers a potential data mine of user data without users expressly opting in for such services (Check the article on social media correlation). 

The report was issued after the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic based at the University of Ottawa law school made a complaint on 12 subjects of which four of them were deemed valid.  The net net – if you are running a social community you had better be 100% transparent and honest with your users regarding how their data will be used, and that it seems includes not opening up your database to third party applications like one big data mine. 

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