Authorities in Europe are not happy with the level of teen privacy and security measures put in place by Facebook. Speaking at the Safer Internet Day Initiative, Viviane Reding – European commissioner for the information society, said that the Social Networking site should tighten up its privacy settings to protect the children.
European Commission for Information Society wanted to pass a legislation to force the required privacy changes for children, however, the Commission was stopped short of doing that – as 25 of the most popular social networking sites in Europe joined forces and pledged to improve their privacy policies. Besides Facebook, these social sites include services such as Yahoo Answers and Windows Live.
Reding wants the social networking sites to make teen profiles private by default. However, more than a year and millions of additional minors later, Facebook has moved in exactly the opposite direction. With the new privacy settings, Facebook has now scrapped almost all the default “private” settings, making the profile photos, status updates, gender, location and other information of users “public” by default.
The European Commissioner has been shocked by this move, and might decide to take the legislative route, if Facebook continues to march on the same path. However, the decision to draft a legislation would be up to Reding’s successor, Neelie Kroes, who is taking over the helms from Reding from today.
Facebook is slowly becoming isolated in its crusade to make all the user’s data public, since 19 of the 25 social sites that were asked to make the minor data private, have already complied with the commissioner’s demands. These 25 sites include Arto, Bebo, Dailymotion, Facebook, Giovani.it, YouTube, Hyves, Windows Live, Xboxlive, MySpace, Nasza-klaza.pl, Netlog, One.lt, Piczo, Rate.ee, Skyrock, SchülerVZ StudiVZ MeinVZ, Habbo, IRC Galleria, Tuenti, Yahoo!Answers, Flickr, and Zap.lu.
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Why isn't Facebook answering its privacy related questions like the above?
Comment by Haresh — February 11, 2010 @ 10:00 am
There is one new website out there right now for kids called http://www.facechipz.com. It is the safer alternative to facebook, and actually works to protect the privacy of children. The kids exchange chips that look like poker chips, and there are codes on the chips and that's how the kids connect. You can't even search for friends. Anyone reading this and worried about their kids on facebook (and i mean the kids that are 13 and under that shouldn't be on facebook anyway) you should check this out!
Comment by mommyofone — February 15, 2010 @ 4:13 pm
REALLY??
Why is it up to a service provider to protect your kids?
When I was growing up, I was checked on constantly. Have we really gotten so lazy that it is too much to ask to get off the couch and check what they are doing every so often?
They're your kids, and if you don't want them on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, etc… BLOCK THE SITES!
The whole point of these sites is to exchange information, and share your day with friends. There needs to be some personal responsibility for what you share and who you share it with. It takes 10 seconds to make everything on Facebook private, teach your kids how to do it and move the heck on.
The government isn't there to shield you from everything!
Comment by Andre Netz — March 2, 2010 @ 2:40 am
[...] challenges aren’t an isolated example in Europe, as the European Commission and other countries in the region have inquired or complained about Facebook’s privacy [...]
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