Facebook Accused of Several Mistakes that it Had Made

Have you ever felt that your information was never private on Facebook? If yes, then let us reveal the fact that the federal government agrees with it. The agency that is responsible for investigating companies for “unfair and deceptive business practices” named U.S. Federal Trade Commission has accused the social networking giant for its privacy mistakes; this was the conclusion of the Federal Trade commission’s two year investigation regarding the social networking giant’s privacy setting. In regards to the accusation, Facebook has agreed that it has disregarded its users’ privacy setting and therefore it will take innumerable measures to properly protect its 800 million members’ data. The settlement with U.S. Federal Trade commission will charge the social networking giant to acquire its users’ agreement for certain changes to privacy settings and subject Facebook to 20 years of independent audits. This settlement is very similar to that, the search engine giant made on google Buzz at the beginning of 2011.  Last year, the FTC has also settled with Twitter, after the agency charged that the service had failed to safeguard users' personal information.

Speaking to Forbes FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said “the settlement demonstrates that his agency “will use every tool at its disposal to ensure that every company, not just Facebook, treats its users’ privacy with care and respect.” A source very familiar to the company revealed that the deal comes as the world’s number one Internet networking company, Facebook is said to be gearing up for an enormous  $10 billion initial public offering in the year 2012.

In regards to the accusation Mark Zukerberg, the Co- Founder of Facebook in a blog post stated that "I'm the first to admit that we'have made a bunch of mistakes," He said a few "high-profile" mistakes, such as changes to the service's privacy policy two years ago, "have often overshadowed much of the good work we have done".

Four years ago in 2007, Facebook have made a mistake on the feature named beacon which created a considerable controversy for its poor privacy settings. In 2009 the company was also accused by Federal Trade commission for a list of privacy violation. These included declining to tell users that information shared with friends was also being shared with the applications their friends installed, even if they themselves had not installed those apps; one-sidedly making every user's list of Facebook friends available to the public; and revealing personal information to advertisers despite repeated pledges not to do so.

According to FDI the  mistakes that are made by  Facebook are, the social networking giant featured a third party app that if fixed by users would have access only to user information that they needed to accomplish. Actually the apps could access nearly all of users’ personal data – data the apps did not need.

The social networking giant stated users that they can curb sharing of information to limited number of people. Actually by selecting the app ‘“Friends Only” did not block their data from being shared with third-party applications their friends availed.

Facebook had a “Verified Apps” program and affirmed that it certified the security of participating apps; however, it declined to do so.

Although, Facebook promised its users that it will not share their personal information with advertisers, it failed to keep up its promise.

Even after users deactivated or deleted their accounts, Facebook has allowed access to the contend which is against their earlier claim that if users deactivate or delete their accounts, their photos and videos would be inaccessible. Finally the social networking giant has declined to keep up its promise that it had claimed earlier that it will compile with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework that governs data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union.

To guarantee that Facebook do a better job, Mark Zuckerberg stated the company had constituted two new corporate privacy officer positions to oversee Facebook products and policy.