There’s a piece of news that is dominating headlines in Canada today – our best hockey players, assembled in Calgary for an Olympic team orientation camp, will play their first actual scrimmage this evening. Oh wait, that’s not it. No, the really big news, at least for us avid netizens, is that Facebook has declared they will make privacy changes after a bit of an ass whupping from Canada’s privacy commissioner.

It isn’t new news that Facebook sometimes plays a little fast and loose with the privacy of its members. According to the American Civil Liberties Association, the social networking site provides too much access to your data whenever you take part in Facebook quizzes or play other games on the site. These third party developers, of which there are hundreds of thousands in 180 countries around the world, are given access to startling amounts of data about you. And there’s nothing anybody can do about those companies then turning around and sharing selling your data to anyone they want.

Currently, the problem lies in the fact that users who want access to these third-party apps and games do, by virture of signing up for them, give Facebook permission to share that data. And that’s where Canada’s privacy commission stepped in. They ruled that some of Facebook’s practices contravened Canada’s private sector privacy act. And they stated that Facebook had 30 days to comply with their new recommendations curtailing the practices, or be taken to court on Monday.

Happily, they have agreed to follow the recommendations and stop sharing the private data of Canadians, and everyone else, to these third-party developers, thus avoiding a court case and all the negative publicity that goes along with it. And with that news, Canadians can relax and go back to worrying about the really important stuff…like whether Sidney Crosby and the boys will kick butt at the 2010 Winter Games.

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Related posts:

1. Deadline approaching for Facebook privacy changes, death is in the details
2. Is Facebook ripping off Twitter (again)?
3. The Facebook Files: Social media in a socialist democracy

Tags: ACLU, Facebook, privacy, Social Media

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