by Sonia Paul on Mashable
Following a three-month audit by Ireland’s Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), Facebook promised at the end of last year to make a slew of changes to give users more control over their privacy. The social networking company gave itself a series of deadlines for this, the first falling on March 31 of this year.
It’s now April — and Facebook has failed to meet its first quarter deadline for privacy changes.
Irish authorities told the Austrian-based online privacy group Europe Versus Facebook, which first commissioned the DPC’s audit, that they hope to reach an agreement with Facebook by the end of April.
Facebook will not be hit with any penalties for missing its privacy deadlines. Here’s the company’s statement:
Facebook Ireland is investing a huge amount of effort to ensure we are making progress against all of the commitments we made during the audit … We have a constant dialogue with officials working for the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, who are responsible for overseeing the work we are undertaking, to reassure them of our progress.We recently reported to them that we have implemented some of their recommendations ahead of schedule and that we expect to meet all the Q1 aspirations over the coming weeks.
Facebook’s international headquarters is in Dublin, Ireland, which is why the DPC’s audit carries so much weight. All users outside of Canada and the U.S. are subject to the data protection regulations set forth in Ireland.
The DPC’s lengthy audit report details all the privacy recommendation changes. The main consensus is not too different from most Facebook privacy arguments — that Facebook needs to be more transparent, and users need to have more control.
The exact changes Facebook agreed to implement, with their respective deadlines, are also summarized online.
Although Irish authorities haven’t set any penalties against Facebook, Max Schrems, who oversees Europe versus Facebook, released his own statement slighting the DPC’s response:
“It seems like the authority does not care if Facebook is breaching the law and the deadline in the authorities report,” he said. “Every normal citizen gets a fine, but Facebook apparently doesn’t.”
What do you think of Facebook’s deadline miss and the DPC’s reaction? Should the DPC have been tougher on Facebook? Sound off in the comments.
