You aren’t alone if you are having a hard time keeping up with Facebook’s privacy settings. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook is nearly in agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to change the default privacy settings on Facebook accounts.
The original cause for concern first came up way back in December of 2009 when Facebook updated user’s default privacy settings to automatically share information. Since that time Facebook has released new features which users have to manually turn off if they do not want to share certain info. There seems to always been another story about Facebook’s privacy concerns, and hopefully this is the start of a great change.
The pending agreement Facebook will be required to obtain, “express affirmative consent” before changing privacy settings. The agreement stipulates that Facebook must submit to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. Google agreed to similar privacy audits in March for its Google+ service.
The assumption here is that Facebook is starting to get all of its ducks in a row for an impending IPO. Facebook might not be in any rush to go public, but Mark Zuckerberg said that its going to happen however would not give a clue as to when
Ultimately this is a victory for users who hopefully not have to worry about their privacy settings changing without their notice.
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