By Jaikumar Vijayan | Feb 16, 2010
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook over changes that the social networking site made to its privacy settings last November and December.

"Changes to the privacy settings that Facebook implemented and represented to increase User privacy had the outright opposite effect of resulting in the public dissemination of personal information that was originally private," the lawsuit claimed.

Facebook's messaging around the changes were "misleading, confusing and disingenuous," said the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages from the company.

A Facebook spokesman insisted that the company had taken all the right measures to inform users about the changes, citing the recent modifications.

"We are confident that the transition process begun more than a month ago was transparent, consistent with people's expectations, and well within the law," said Facebook director of policy communications Barry Schnitt in an e-mail.

"Specifically, the announcement and education campaign by Facebook around the changes was unprecedented in its scope. Any recommended changes to a person's privacy settings were clearly shown to them repeatedly and were not implemented until they accepted these changes," Schnitt said.

As part of the revamp, Facebook introduced a privacy configuration wizard to allow users to set their privacy preferences. The company said the revisions would make it far simpler for users to set their privacy preferences and enable them to make more informed choices concerning the use of their personal data.

However, the lawsuit, which was filed by five Facebook users on behalf of all Facebook users, alleged that the company's modifications have only resulted in more personal data being pushed out to the Internet while making privacy options even harder to exercise.

Prior to Facebook's modifications last year, the only personal information that was available by default via public search was the user's name and the networks that the user belonged to. Users had the option of deciding whether they wanted other pieces of information, such as their photos an friend listings, available publicly the lawsuit said.

Know More:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9157758/
Facebook_hit_with_class_action_over_privacy_changes?
source=CTWNLE_nlt_security_2010-02-17

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