Facebook told to tighten up privacy rules

Facebook, let´s face it no stranger to controversial changes to terms and conditions around data privacy, is to tighten up its privacy rules after complaints from Canada´s privacy commissioner.

The move will see users given much more control over what and how much information is shared with the site and its third parties. This is obviously bad news for their appeal to advertisers who obviously want as much customer data available as possible.

The changes will be introduced over the coming year and will affect every single one of their 250 million members. The site has agreed to change its default privacy settings and to share with its users how their information is being used for advertising.

This might appear bad news for Facebook in the short-term but it was quite clear that it coud not continue in the vein it has been. Users are now more picky than ever (and rightly so) about how their data is being used and instead of hiding from the notion of privacy social networks should be embracing it. It´s something that we and one of our clients, sixpartswater, has certainly embraced in building a network for people to share sensitive updates on their health with distinct and controlled groups. It´s the control element over the information that´s the USP.

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