As usual no information is safe, despite claims to the contrary
A Canadian institution is looking into the privacy policies and safeguards for personal information in a bid to see whether the social networking site is violating the law by letting outside sources have access to information that they are not supposed to.
There are a series of apparent violations ranging from destruction of personal information for closed accounts to letting users properly decide which information will be shared with random folks over the internet.
It seems that even selecting the strongest privacy option on Facebook will not prevent some users from reading personal information.
This comes about because of friends on user’s lists who have slightly lower privacy options on their profiles allowing others to view higher security profile information.
Also, any third party application that is installed on a profile access user’s information, whether it needs to or not.
Facebook refutes most of these claims, mostly on the basis that users of the social networking site’s user’s share their information willingly with others. However, the institution is worried that Facebook may be deceiving its users.
Brett Venter
