Private Life: Facebook UnderWatch in the United States

The social network agreed to submit to audits on its privacy policy for 20 years. Its chairman, Mark Zuckerberg, admits to having made “a bunch of mistakes.”

On Tuesday, Facebook came to an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission concerning an investigation being carried out on its privacy policy. According to this agreement, Facebook will have to obtain the approval of its members before changing the way in which it collects and shares their personal data. Moreover, the social network will be subject to independent audits for the next 20 years verifying that it doesn’t mislead its users.

The FTC had accused the social network of lying about its privacy policy on several occasions. Facebook, for example, had promised its users that it wouldn’t share personal data with advertisers, which, according to the FTC, it did anyway. Similarly, the company didn’t appropriately inform its users when a whole series of privacy settings were modified at the end of 2009. The commission points out that information that could be considered private by users, such as friends lists, had been made public.

“Facebook’s innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy,” states FTC President Jon Leibowitz. And to assure this, two new corporate officer roles for privacy management will be created at Facebook.

New Rules in Europe

In a post about this agreement on his blog, Mark Zuckerberg admitted once again to having made “a bunch of mistakes,” which “have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.” But the chairman and founder of Facebook also sought to minimize the reach of this agreement by pointing out that Google and Twitter had also been placed under examination by the FTC, the former for 20 years (after the social network Google Buzz went online), and the latter for 10 (because of computer security concerns). Mark Zuckerberg also promised that he was “committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy.”

Facebook is getting in line with American authorities while the site is preparing to go public between next April and June. The social network, which counts more than 800 million members around the world, hopes to raise some $10 billion during this operation, which could bring the company’s worth to more than $100 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. On the other hand, Facebook remains under the threat of the adoption of a new European Commission directive, which could force the site to get the consent of Internet users before distributing targeted advertising.