The U.S. government asked the site to set up a series of measures to protect the privacy of its members and to submit to audits for twenty years.
Facebook is a rounded back face to
U.S. authorities.
According to reports the
Wall Street Journal, the social network is about to conclude an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, to guide its privacy practices.
At the end of the agreement, Facebook will undertake not to make any "retroactive change" on the privacy settings of its members without receiving their permission. Clearly, he may not unilaterally modify the hearing and status messages.
The agreement, which must still be approved in the coming weeks by a committee of the
FTC, close an action started after the introduction of new privacy settings in December 2009.
At the time, the founder of social network, Mark Zuckerberg, had explained that he wanted to implement "a more simple control of privacy."
The new settings encourage members to allow inspection of their wall for all users instead of only their friends. Several advocacy groups for privacy had opposed the changes. An audit of confidentiality for twenty years According to
the Wall Street Journal, the agreement being negotiated with the
FTC will not cover all modifications of the site. The recent introduction of "
telex", which shows activity on the right of his friends in real time, do not fall within the scope of the new rules, since it was not accompanied by changes in the settings of confidentiality.
In addition,
Facebook will always find ways to encourage them to share more content. "
The era of Internet privacy is now over," said
Mark Zuckerberg in 2010, in one of his most famous statements.
To avoid unpleasant surprises, however, wants the FTC to force Facebook to bend over twenty years of regular and independent audits on the issue of confidentiality.
The social network wanted this control applies only for five years.
A practice already applied to other giants of the Net. In March,
Google has agreed to submit to an examination of its privacy policy, again for twenty years. Twitter will in turn respond to audits of its security every ten years after the piracy cases with particularly struck on behalf of
Barack Obama.
The Wall Street Journal notes that this collaboration of Facebook with the
FTC comes as rumors of an upcoming
IPO of the company, valued over $ 100 billion, redoubled in intensity.
In recent months,
Facebook had already tried to toe the line, changing several times its privacy settings to give more control to its members about their publications, without triggering controversy. "It is increasingly important to those checks to people and be very clear about it," argued
Mark Zuckerberg.
