Facebook Simplified: Privacy Policy Undergoes a Change!
Facebook has finally simplified its Privacy Policy. For the past few months, Facebook has received harsh criticism for a number of issues. On Friday, the social networking giant offered a sneak peek for its users on how it intends to present its Privacy Policy. With almost everyone with internet access and over a 500 million active users, Facebook’s Privacy Policy always had been an issue of contention. The company also claimed that their new Privacy Policy is for “regular people” which is actually an effort to make it easier for people to understand.
The New York Times had commented on Facebook’s lengthy, dense Privacy Policy and noticed that it is actually longer than the U.S. Constitution without the amendments and it is hard for average people to understand. For quite sometime Facebook has been revising its Privacy Policy every now and then, to require users to opt out if they wish to keep information private, making most of that information public by default. This put the company under further scrutiny by privacy groups, users and government officials. However, the updated policy does not change Facebook’s existing methods of getting user information but it makes the whole process a lot easier to understand.
The new version is shorter and easy to understand with headings like “your information and how it is used “and ”how advertising works,” which make the process simple and clear to everyone. The old-school format Privacy Policy which used highly formal language and was difficult to comprehend is replaced by the new online document. This format will incorporate more modern ideas about online communications and Facebook’s very own Help Center. Users can find information organized by topics and get answers and explanations in simple language.
Facebook said the planned changes do not extend to the site’s Privacy Policy, although the new format has led it to provide new and more complete explanations of certain policies, including about what information it collects and how it uses it and how advertisers are able target ads to users.
However, there is still a controversy with how Facebook defines “your information”. It does not include user data like IP addresses, triangulated location of a mobile phone, and the date and time stamp of uploaded photographs. Despite the ambiguity, the company has made the right move to make changes in the user policy. Representatives of Facebook said that if people like the new Privacy Policy draft, the company will move forward and take it through its standard “notice and comment” process for policy changes at a later date.
