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Having settled a number of privacy issues with the FTC over in the US last month, Facebook also faced a European interrogation over its data practices.
With Facebook’s international HQ being based in Ireland, the office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) conducted the audit on the social network’s policies. And the results have just been made public, with Facebook publishing the details on its Euro policy page.
Facebook noted that the audit found in its favour on many issues, validating the site’s security levels and the “innovative use of cookies to identify unusual or suspicious activity”. It also held that Facebook’s real-name only policy was valid.
Most importantly for the website, the DPC found that Facebook’s targeting of adverts to users by utilising personal data on their profile is “legitimate”.
And furthermore the office looked into an issue which has been brought up on Techwatch before, that Facebook tracks surfing, even of users who aren’t logged in or non-users who merely visit the site or other sites with social plug-ins such as the famous Like button.
There was concern that the social network was building up a so-called “shadow profile” of data on such users, but it was found that this wasn’t the case. While Facebook may collect this data, it doesn’t process it in any way according to the DPC.
The DPC said: “While certain data which could be used to build what we have seen termed as a ‘shadow profile’ of a non-user was received by Facebook, no actual use of this nature was made of such data”, adding “neither is there any profile formed of non-users which could be attributed to a person on becoming a user.”
We should hope not.
Facebook has however agreed to change its data retention policy and to delete this information “very quickly” after it has been collected, as opposed to holding it indefinitely.
The DPC also criticised the tag suggest feature for being introduced in a less than transparent manner. However, its method of introduction didn’t break the law, the office confirmed.
Although the DPC did recommend that Facebook display additional notifications to European users to educate them further regarding this feature.
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