Ok, so you didn’t need the Portable Consultant to tell you that Facebook has privacy issues, but this CBC news story covers the particulars of how the site breaches PIPEDA, the Canadian privacy legislation.

My own use of the online games is minimal because I was always concerned about the permission statements that you get when you sign up for them.

That’s not how I personally use Facebook anyway, but the recent ‘conversion’ of a cute aquarium game (send pretty fishes to your friends’ aquariums) to a dating service with constant emails (“Honestly, Dear… all those speed date emails are spam. All I ever did was send her a fish!”)… well, that was downright naughty. Bad Facebook, bad, bad!

I was struck by one item in the news report that would be funny if it weren’t true:

“- Facebook keeps the profiles of deceased users for “memorial purposes” but does not make this clear. Recommendation: Information about use for memorial purposes should be in Facebook’s privacy policy.”

…Thank you, Facebook, but when the time comes The Portable Consultant would rather have family and friends handle any and all memorials. All social networking sites should delete accounts after an agreed period without any logins, at the very least. (This is a much larger issue, of course.)

Facebook needs to get its act together, but users/consumers also need to understand how important personal info is …and take care not to sign it away without due diligence.

Cheers,
-pmh