Facebook seems to be getting a lot of exercise in backpedalling and concession-making this month. Not only did the company put its plans to share contact details with application developers on hold and make concessions to the South Korean government, but now it’s made concessions to the German data protection agency:
Data protection officials in Germany have won a stage victory over the Internet giant Facebook and its head Mark Zuckerberg. Responding to official complaints, the company has agreed to make far-reaching changes to its controversial “Friend Finder” service.
Until now, people have received e-mails inviting them to join Facebook, even if they had never before had anything to do with the social network. Particularly disturbing for many of the recipients of such invitations, the mails often included images of people they knew.
Read more on San Francisco Sentinel Der Spiegel. Monsters & Critics also covers the development.
Do you think all of these privacy concerns have contributed to renewed debate about online privacy in the Senate?
[CORRECTION: some material in this blog entry was originally attributed incorrectly to the San Francisco Sentinel. I subsequently discovered that they had seemingly used Der Spiegel’s material without attribution. My apologies to Der Spiegel for the error on my part.]