Thaindian News

By Meena Kar
Washington, Apr 29, (THAINDIAN NEWS) Though Facebook is one of the leading social networking websites and boasts of around 400 million users, many have in the past questioned its privacy policies. However, the recent changes that have been made by the Facebook creators have left many U.S lawmakers voicing their concern over the security of the user’s private information. On Tuesday, Apr 27, Senators Michael Bennet, Mark Begich, Al Franken and Charles Schumer reportedly wrote a letter to the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg where they objected to the change in the privacy settings that will make some of the information put by the users visible to all. Information like current city, likes, hometown and interests along with the friend list which were previously only visible to individual’s friends would under the new changes be made available to a third-party.

The new changes would allow a third-party advertiser to collect these personal information and store them for more than 24 hours. The senators also complained about the Facebook like button on certain websites that will allow people to share these information with others on Facebook. The senators said that this will allow the third-party not only to get information about an individual’s profile but also that of his/her friends along with their profile information.

Charles Schumer has also written to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), asking them to provide strict guidelines to different social networking websites about the sharing of the information. However, Facebook on its part has sent a reply to the Senators reportedly dated Apr 27. In the reply Facebook has maintained that the new changes have been done to “enhance personalization and promote social activity across the internet”.