Kelly Faveash reports:
Facebook insisted yesterday that it is heavily focused on tightening privacy controls for its users, even if information posted on its platform is re-published elsewhere by people accessing the site.
The company’s EU director of policy, Richard Allan, told attendees at a Westminster Media Forum seminar on Tuesday that the vast majority of Facebookers are on the site in order to share and find content with people online.
But he said he was concerned about what he described as “the concept to shoot the messenger”.
Allan said: “There is an increasing trend that where people are uncomfortable about content, they’re not necessarily going to the source of that content, but they’re going to those places where the content is shared or indexed and asking them to resolve the problem. I think that’s extremely worrying for a whole range of reasons.”
Facebook hadn’t always got its privacy controls “exactly right” in the past, admitted Allan.
Read more in The Register. Pichayada Promchertchoo of eWeek also covers Allan’s comments at the seminar.
Both reports spotlight statements by Chris Pounder on Amberhawk about the “right to be forgotten:”
“The right to be forgotten won’t work unless it’s agreed on an international basis,” said Dr. Chris Pounder, director of information law training firm Amberhawk, adding that the industry is not dealing with privacy but data protection, including fair processing, accuracy and relevance, which he claimed is “more fruitful than the right to be forgotten”.
“Right to be forgotten will not work. Simple as that,” Pounder said.