A New Zealand company has violated the rights of Canadians



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To what extent can companies use personal information of copied persons from a publicly accessible website? According to a decision released Wednesday by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Profile Technology Ltd. New Zealand violated the privacy rights of some 4.5 million Canadians by copying the profiles. The Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner has ruled Facebook users around the world and posted them on their own website.

The company said that she was content to index information on Facebook. 420 million people worldwide. He also argued that Canadian law did not apply. However, the commission said that under Canadian law, these people had to give their consent because Profile Technology used the information not only for indexing, but also to launch its own website. social networking called Profile Engine. Reuse of personal information for new purposes for which consent was not given contravenes the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), said the Commission

. . One complainant stated that the information had been removed from a Facebook profile that she had in her teenage years, and that anyone looking for her name – including potential employers – would assume that she was in the same position. she was very immature. Another said that unfounded allegations of aggression, which had been posted and then removed from Facebook, continued to appear on the profile engine.

"In our opinion, even if the respondent had originally collected, it subsequently copied and used this information for the purpose of creating its own social networking site", said the Commission

which reused information in profile without the consent and without taking into account, over time, updates, changes in the privacy settings or deletion of the content that people subsequently made to their Facebook account since the information was copied from Facebook. He did so knowing that much of the profile information used and disclosed on his website was out of date or was no longer public on Facebook.

Abandoned Enterprise

The Commission recommended that Canadian data be removed from its website. deleted Instead, in March Profile Technology discontinued the profile engine. The data has been removed from the site but uploaded to the Internet Archive where it is still publicly available through peer-to-peer sharing, even if it is no longer indexed.

The OPC sent its findings to The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand, which is studying what options could be offered under the laws of that country [19659002] Profile Technology did not obtain any personal profile information from Facebook using an API. A privacy policy statement on the Profile Technology website states that the personal data collected includes "all parts of your profile on another social network that this social network has enabled our search. Engine to download and store at a time when your privacy settings have allowed search engines to index those parts of your profile … The information collected in this manner is treated by us as information public. "

" Facebook profiles and contracted with us to provide a powerful search engine for Facebook (originally referred to simply as "Advanced Search for Facebook" and later renamed "The Profile Engine." [)] "says the website." We added these Facebook profiles to the profile engine database with the full knowledge, approval and permission of Facebook. Facebook agreed to this because we provided them with "

" people gave their permission "

In its report, the commission noted that on a FAQ page on Profile Technology, in response to a question:" I do not think so "The company said:" In most cases, users allowed the creation of their profile engine profile when they checked a box in their Facebook privacy settings: "Allow my profile to be indexed by search engines."

Profile Technolo Gy refused to give the Privacy Commission a copy of his contract with Facebook, citing confidentiality issues. Facebook told the Commission that Profile Technology was in complete agreement with Facebook's terms and conditions of development that govern Facebook's use of the brand, including access and access. use of Facebook user profile data. He says Profile Technology violated the respondent because it "recovered, copied, indexed and displayed selected public user profile data for its own purposes."

Both companies continued , which blocked access to the profile engine. . This caused Profile Technology to complain about not being able to update the copied profiles, especially if the user had chosen to no longer have a public profile.

The Commission notes that the Federal Court of Canada has ruled that PIPEDA may apply to a foreign national. a for-profit organization engaged in a commercial activity where there is a real and substantial connection to Canada. This applies in the case where the five complainants are Canadian

The Canadian Privacy Commission also noted that the Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand has ruled that "any and all Internet information is generally available to the public. used by others. "But it was at that point that the profile engine was only a Facebook search tool." The Canadian decision dealt with the information used on the social media website, which raised the issue He also argues that PIPEDA has a narrower definition of publicly available information than New Zealand law


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