Facebook Changes Privacy Policy Due to Canadian Concerns
August 27, 2009
In July, Facebook was found to have breached Canadian law by holding on to users' personal data indefinitely. As a result of negotiations with Canada’s privacy commissioner, Facebook announced this week that it was changing that the way in which applications access user data as well as becoming more transparent about what data Facebook gathers and why. Furthermore, Facebook will also make it clear that users can deactivate or delete their account. This change in privacy control will enable User’s to have far more as to what types of personal data applications can access.
At Younite, we fully understand the issues raised by the Canadian privacy commissioner and the underlying desire of online users to have control of their own personal data. In fact, YOUnite was founded specifically to address and surpass, the increased expectations of data privacy, management and control.
YOUnite's patented technology offers a unique solution to the problem of data security and specifically addresses the issue of data control and access to personal information through the notion of "distributed sharing of personal identity attributes". By applying YOUnite's patented technology to the social network scenario in particular, a user would be able to decide what pieces of information would be accessible by which individuals or applications. Not only does YOUnite's patented technology enable a user to grant permissions to specific pieces of data on an individual basis, it enables the user to take those permissions away at any time. Therefore, the user has complete control of their personal information with complete granularity.
In this particular example, a YOUnite enabled Facebook, would allow the individual to control his or her own data within the social network and thereby specifically address the concerns raised by the Canadian privacy commissioner. The user would now decide exactly who could, and more importantly, who could not access personal data that is stored within the social network's database. This would not only apply to the user's "friends" or "groups", but would also serve as a means to prevent third-party access to the user's personal information without their knowledge or explicit consent. The notion of selective sharing of personal information is extremely powerful and when augmented into the social network environment, YOUnite's patented technology provides a unique and elegant solution to privacy and security issues.
For more information, please visit our website and while you're there, read through our Resources Section for specific Use Cases and White Papers.
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Sources: TechCrunch and BBC News.