Facebook Beefs Up Privacy Protection

Racy pics, suicide threats get would-be cops dumped

(NEWSER) - Law enforcement agencies are probing potential recruits’ digital lives for information that might make them unfit for the job, USA Today reports. More than a third of police agencies look into applicants’ social media presence, says a new report conducted for police executives. Reviewing postings to sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, some agencies require applicants’ online passwords, or want to see their text-messaging and email records. More»

(NEWSER) - Facebook suffers from "serious privacy gaps" and must become more transparent about how personal information is handled to comply with the law, says a government watchdog in Canada. The report by the country's privacy commissioner marks the first time a government has found Facebook to be acting illegally, reports the Financial Times. The commissioner's top concern: third-party applications that can access users' personal information without their knowledge. More»

Maryland may ban practice

(NEWSER) - Some employers and colleges have found an ingenious way around Facebook's pesky privacy settings: Simply demand that applicants or students friend you, give you a tour of their account, or even divulge their usernames and passwords. MSNBC reports on a number of places instituting the troubling practices:

• At Maryland's Department of Corrections, job applicants are asked to log in to their account and allow an interviewer to watch as they click through their photos and posts. The Department of Corrections used to ask for username and password outright, but stopped after an ACLU complaint last year.
• Colleges are requiring student athletes to "friend" a coach or school official so that their Facebook posts can be monitored. If they refuse, they don't play. "Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members’ social networking sites and postings," reads the University of North Carolina handbook.
• Though social media monitoring seems to take place mostly with student athletes, non-athlete college applicants have reported to one lawyer that they were asked for their login information during interviews.

New rules will call for improvements on social networking sites

(NEWSER) - The EU is demanding enhanced privacy on Facebook and other social networking sites, calling for a “right to be forgotten." The justice commissioner will unveil rules before summer demanding, among other things, that strict privacy settings be the default for users. Sites like Facebook “can't think they're exempt just because they have their servers in California or do their data processing in Bangalore,” says a spokesman. “If they're targeting EU citizens, they will have to comply with the rules.” More»

'Friend Finder' could get the social networking site a hefty fine

(NEWSER) - Facebook faces legal action in Germany over the nation's strict privacy laws, Monsters and Critics reports. A privacy commissioner has charged that the site's "Friend Finder" breaks German law. The software looks at the address books of users and sends emails to friends asking them to join Facebook. That function breaks German bans on firms collecting information on non-clients and using it for marketing, he says. More»