Facebook Ireland Accused of Privacy Law Violations
The Irish branch of the world’s largest social network is facing accusations that it is violating privacy laws by creating “shadow profiles,” both of users and of those yet to sign up for the service, various media outlets reported Friday.
According to Laura Locke of CNET, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (IDC) announced the charges against Facebook Ireland, saying that they were planning to launch a “comprehensive” investigation into the website for allegedly “extracting data from current users — without their consent or knowledge — and building ‘extensive profiles’ on people who haven’t even signed on for the service.”
“Names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, work information, and perhaps even more sensitive information such as sexual orientation, political affiliations, and religious beliefs are being collected and could possibly be misused, Irish authorities claim,” Locke added in her report.
All Facebook users living outside of the U.S. and Canada are contracted with Facebook Ireland, CNET reports, and the investigation was launched after the IDC received a complaint from a 24-year-old Austrian law student who contacted Facebook executives for his personal data.
“To his surprise, the company sent him a CD with 1,200 pages–three years worth–of highly personal ‘deleted’ material ranging from friend requests to his history of ‘Pokes’ to lists of people he had ‘defriended’ to entire chat messages,” Locke said.
That revelation led Schrems to file 22 discrete complaints about the social networking company to Irish authorities, who will now pursue a “statutory” audit of Facebook Ireland beginning next week. If they are found to be in violation of data protection laws, the company could face “immediate charges,” according to what IDC representatives told Fox News.
A Facebook spokesman has denied the charges.
“The allegations are false,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told FoxNews.com reporter Gene J. Koprowski on October 21. “We enable you to send emails to your friends, inviting them to join Facebook. We keep the invitee’s email address and name to let you know when they join the service. This practice is common among almost all services that involve invitations… The assertion that Facebook is doing some sort of nefarious profiling is simply wrong.”
However, one expert interviewed by Koprowski believes that the charges being levied against Facebook Ireland could very well be accurate.
“There can be little doubt that Facebook collects from its current users information about individuals who are not currently Facebook users, and collects from its current users information about other Facebook users,” Kelly Kubasta, head of the social media division for the Dallas law firm Klemchuk Kubasta, told him.
However, she added, “Regardless of what Facebook is doing, many websites collect and propagate personally identifiable information about individuals who have not entered into any agreement with the website.”
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