Sunday, August 30, 2009

More Privacy On Facebook

A couple of important advances in Facebook's handling of user privacy popped up this week.

First, Facebook agreed to the demands of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner: when you delete your profile, Facebook will actually delete it - not just store it.

Second, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California created a quiz application that demonstrates how Facebook shares with quiz developers not just your personal data but the data of all your Facebook friends whenever you take a Facebook Quiz.
To drive this point home, the ACLU's Quiz loads up information pulled from your friends' profiles and displays that data below the answer for your perusal. Here, information on your friends is shown including hometowns, favorite books, political views, networks, birthdays, number of wall posts and even personal photos."