Recent scandals show that limiting ad partners' access to your data isn't enough to protect it. Facebook Inc.,which turned 15 on Feb.4,spent the past year peppering you with apologias and promises about protecting your personal data from others.The company wants you to know that it doesn't sell your data to advertisers, per se, and that you can limit data sharing with some other apps. It's going to keep paying for pop-up kiosks and subway ads to reinforce that the thickets of data growing in its garden now are(imagine!)under your control. But Facebook still isn't being transparent about the ways it collects information on you,and it's quietly stepping up efforts to grab lots more.The company's knowledge goes far beyond status updates. It tracks people across the Internet on other companies'websites and apps.It uses IP addresses totarget ads to people who turned off location-based tracking on their phones.It's been caught collecting call and text histories from users' Android devices.It's stored facial data from people who never agreed to biometric scans. It was just caught monitoring the phone activity of some kids as young as 13.
On Feb.7,Germany's antitrust regulator was expected to announce the results of a three-year investigation into whether the company has illegally used its market power to coerce data sharing consent. No wonder Facebook wants to have a different discussion about privacy.From his Senate testimony last year to a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month,Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has stressed that Facebook isn't selling user data.
In privacy terms,this is a largely semantic distinction. Facebook does sell clients your attention,tailoring ads to what your online behavior suggests you might like. The less data the company shares due to privacy concemns or anything else-the more it can charge for exclusive access to its 2.7 billion global users.
Europe is a step ahead:Under the General Data Protection Regulation enacted last year,Facebook has to more clearly disclose what data it's gathering and why when requesting that users click OK. Irish authorities already have seven investigations open on Facebook's tactics.If the company is in violation,it could be fined a maximum of 4 per cent of its global revenue.Of course,it's difficult to imagine any regulator conjuring a fine big enough to upend the data hungry business model of a company that made S21.7 billion in profit last year.And as long as Facebook is unwilling to limit its collection practices,we'll all have little choice in what we share.
What can be inferred from the last paragraph?