• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 5, 2012

The Federal Trade Commission should require Facebook to restore users' 2009 privacy settings, the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center says.

EPIC made the suggestion late last year in written comments filed with the FTC about its proposed settlement with Facebook. The potential resolution, announced in November, would settle an FTC complaint alleging that Facebook deceived users by repeatedly sharing information they believed was private. One example highlighted by the FTC was Facebook's move in late 2009 to reclassfiy a host of data as “public” -- including people's names, photos and friend lists.

To settle the charges, Facebook promised that it would in the future obtain users' express consent before sharing their information with a wider audience than in the past. The social networking service also promised to prevent anyone from accessing deleted accounts within 30 days of deletion. Additionally, Facebook agreed to institute a comprehensive privacy policy and to submit to audits for 20 years.

EPIC argues in its written comments that those terms don't go far enough. “As the harm arose from Facebook’s original decision to unilaterally change the privacy settings of its users, equitable relief requires the Commission to reestablish the privacy settings that were in place prior to the company’s unfair acts,” EPIC says in its papers. 

The advocacy group is also pressing for other changes to the agreement. Among them, EPIC says Facebook should allow people to access all data that Facebook retains about them, obtain opt-in consent to automatic tagging based on facial recognition technology, and stop tracking users who are logged out. (A developer last year published research showing that Facebook could track users whenever they visited sites with a social plug-in, even if the users were logged out. Facebook said the findings were the result of a bug, which it fixed.)

EPIC isn't the only one saying the proposed settlement should be strengthened. UC Berkeley professor Chris Hoofnagle also argues for Facebook to restore the defaults that existed when users signed up. Hoofnagle is one of three people slated to serve on the board of directors of a new $6.5 million privacy foundation that Facebook said it would create to settle a lawsuit about another privacy debacle -- the Beacon program, which told users about their friends' purchases.