Facebook to name new privacy monitoring roles in FTC transaction

While Facebook is facing a significant fine on the part of the FTC for its repeated data breaches and user privacy concerns, the social network is currently seeking to integrate new privacy watchdogs to better secure its users. systems.

According to the New York Times:

"Facebook has agreed to create a privacy protection committee to protect the data of its users, as well as an external appraiser who would be appointed by the company and the FTC," said the person, who declined to To be named because she was not allowed to speak in public. The social network will also appoint a compliance officer to oversee privacy efforts, said one of the interviewees. "

In its last earnings report, the company indicated that it had put aside $ 5 billion to cover a possible fine of the FTC resulting from an investigation into his data breaches. This new agreement is part of the same and ongoing review of Facebook's practices and would help prevent the company from being subject to extensive compliance regulations, while providing an additional level of transparency over its processes.

It's hard to say how effective it would be to prevent this from happening again – you would badume, at least in most cases, that Facebook would have learned the lessons from the user data exchange and would not put a such unauthorized risk access again. But questions remain after a year of controversy and various violations – and since Facebook holds personal information on some 2.38 billion people, its potential influence can be enormous.

Given this, appointments would make sense. It depends on the exact way Facebook dictates them and the process structure, but it should help manage the use of the data.

Offenses and hacks are a completely different thing, and the way Facebook uses its data to target its ads is another element. It's hard to say if this would be the subject of further examination – you would expect it to be, but again, it depends on what Facebook is willing to do , the degree of supervision that it shares and the actions that flow from it.

To sum up, Facebook must do more to ensure that people's data are not misused. Given the large amount of personal information that has already been disclosed, the effectiveness of any measure will be questionable. Even if Facebook were to end all such violations, which is the best that it can now do, the existence of previous data leaks and databases remains a cause for concern. That's not to say that Facebook should just give up, but it could become increasingly difficult to designate future offenders, even with these new posts in place, as a lot of information is already circulating on black digital markets.