Law students at the University of Ottawa’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic have filed a privacy complaint against Facebook with Canada’s federal privacy commissioner.
The law students analyzed Facebook’s policies and practices in a course last winter. They then identified specific practices that may violate the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and wrote them up in a 36-page complaint. Chief among the allegations is Facebook’s “failure to inform Facebook members of how their personal information is disclosed to third parties for advertising and other profit-making activities and its failure to obtain permission from Facebook members to such uses and disclosures of their personal information.”
“We’ve reviewed the complaint and found it has serious factual errors — most notably its neglect of the fact that almost all Facebook data is willingly shared by users,” Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly told the Associated Press.—Catherine Rampell
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