Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2010, as a news item on FACUA’s request for Facebook to be investigated over user privacy. The outcome of FACUA’s complaint is not covered here.
The consumer organisation FACUA has asked the Data Protection Agency (Spain’s data protection authority) to investigate breaches of Facebook’s privacy rules, since it appears that ten of the most popular games and applications on the social network have passed on or sold confidential data to 25 advertisers.
On Facebook, people share pictures, hobbies, names and sometimes very personal information that users only want to share with the friends they have chosen. In this case, it is claimed that the data handed to advertisers through these applications included the names and profiles of users and of all their friends, even those who had selected the “private” option.
That is why an investigation has been requested to establish the extent of this sale or transfer of confidential data. If the evidence is confirmed, they say there will be no hesitation in taking the appropriate disciplinary action against Facebook and all the companies involved in handing over confidential data.
This reopens the debate on whether, in some countries, our laws are ready to protect the right to privacy in the face of new technologies, in this case social networks, where it is easy to get hold of a database.
Further reading
Featured image: mikemacmarketing, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
