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EU to mull over social networks privacy

by on12 April 2018


Facebook assurances not enough

European Union privacy watchdogs will look deeper into the harvesting of personal data from social networks for economic or political purposes, following the scandal engulfing Facebook.

While the Tame US politicians seem to think that Mark Zuckerberg saying sorry is good enough for them, it appears that Facebook is in real hot water in Europe, where politicians are harder to buy...er lobby.

Andrea Jelinek, chair of the group of EU data protection authorities said that a multi-billion dollar social media platform saying it is sorry simply is not enough.

“What we see today is most likely only one instance of the much wider spread practice of personal harvesting data from social media for economic or political reasons”, Jelinek said.

The plan appears to be to create a Social Media Working Group to see what should be done to stop the likes of Facebook and Google using data in a way which can be harvested for economic or political reasons.

However, Europeans have good reason to feel smug about what they have done so far to limit the privacy heists from big corporates. It is about to bring in landmark data protection regulation (GDPR) which should prevent Facebook doing much of what it did in the current scandal.

German Justice Minister Katarina Barley was critical of the CEO. She took to Twitter citing Zuckerberg’s pledge that he would accept responsibility for his company’s failures, saying that "apparently this hasn’t been that important until now”.

 “Facebook must finally protect the privacy of millions of people”, she said. “It’s good that we have stringent rules in the European Union. Whoever breaks those will feel the consequences."

 

Last modified on 12 April 2018
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