Facebook privacy controls & Phorm (legal issues)

Facebook Risks Legal Action Over Privacy


Facebook could be hauled into court amid concerns there are "serious gaps" in their policies protecting members' privacy.

The country's privacy commissioner has investigated the site and warned it could be breaking the law.

It has published a report which suggests users do not understand how to delete private information and their details could fall into the wrong hands.

If the social networking site does not address the privacy concerns within 30 days, it could face legal action, the report said.

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Facebook Risks Legal Action Over Privacy



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Add Karma Poke to your Facebook account?

Facebook pages must be a rich source of data for Phorm* on peoples interests - and their friends are likely to have similar interests. I'd suggest cutting Phorm out of Facebook would be a significant loss to Phorm, so why is it such a ridiculous suggestion that Kent might be offering financial inducements to Facebook to allow Phorm unfettered access?

Can anyone suggest any other reasons why Facebook haven't copied Amazon? There's far, far stronger ethical reasons why Facebook should opt out - especially as it is the privacy of someone not even using a Phorm ISP that is at stake.

https://nodpi.org/forum/index.php?topic=1390.0


*Phorm

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, is a Delaware, United States-based digital technology company known for its advertising software. Founded in 2002, the company originally distributed programs that were considered spyware, from which they made millions of dollars in revenue. It has since stopped distributing those programs after complaints from groups in the United States and Canada, and announced it was talking with several United Kingdom Internet service providers (ISPs) to deliver targeted advertising based on the websites that users visit. The company's proposed advertising system, called Webwise, is a behavioral targeting service (similar to NebuAd or Front Porch) that uses deep packet inspection to examine pages. Phorm says the data collected will be anonymous and will not be used to identify users, and that their service would even include protection against phishing (fraudulent collection of users' personal information). Nonetheless, World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee and others have spoken out against Phorm for tracking users' browsing habits, and the ISP BT Group has been criticised for running secret trials of the service. The UK Information Commissioner's Office has voiced legal concerns with Webwise as it is currently implemented, and has said it would only be legal as an "opt-in" service, not an opt-out system. The European Commission has called on the UK to protect Web users' privacy, and opened an infringement proceeding against the country in regard to ISPs' use of Phorm. Some groups, including Amazon.com and the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia and other collaborative wiki projects), have already requested an opt-out of their websites from scans by the system.