The Electronic Privacy Information Center and 14 other watchdogs filed a complaint Wednesday with the Federal Trade Commission about Facebook’s new features, including
“instant personalization,� which shares users’ data with outside companies.
“Instant personalization violates user
expectations and reveals user information without the user’s consent,� EPIC and the other groups argue.
Facebook’s instant
personalization program shares users’ names, photos, friend lists and other information with Yelp, Microsoft Docs and Pandora when people visit those companies while logged in to
Facebook. Even when users opt out of the feature, their information can still be shared if their friends. The only way to prevent that is for users to individually block Yelp, Microsoft Docs and
Pandora from accessing information about them.
EPIC and the other groups argue that this procedure is “clearly intended to discourage users from exercising privacy
controls.�
“Facebook’s opt-out for “instant personalization� is difficult for users to find,
unduly complicated, and deceptive. There is no way for users to opt-out with one click. Instead, users must go to each separate application in what will be a universe of ever expanding applications,
and opt-out from each individually,� the groups write.
The organizations joining in the complaint include the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Federation of America,
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Concurrently with filing the complaint, EPIC expressed concern to Congress about the FTC’s ability
to “protect American consumers as new business practices emerge.�
“Facebook continues to manipulate the privacy settings of users and
its own privacy policy so it can take personal information provided by users for a limited purpose and make it widely available for commercial purposes,� EPIC writes.
“But the Federal Trade Commission has already received a formal complaint about this problem.�