Attorney General Tim Fox Demands Answers from Facebook
On Monday, Montana Attorney General Tim Fox joined a coalition of 37 state Attorneys General, demanding answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the company’s business practices and privacy protections.
“In the news recently, Facebook has had a practice of either voluntarily sharing private and personal information of its Facebook users, or more recently where they claim that the information was used without permission and in contravention of their policies,” said Fox. “This resulted most recently with about 50 million Americans’ personal and private data being mined in ways they say they were not aware of.”
Fox said he and the other signers of the letter have questions that want Zuckerberg to answer.
“Were those terms of service clear and understandable? How did Facebook monitor what these developers did with all the data that they collected? What type of controls did Facebook have over the data given to developers? Did Facebook have protective safeguards in place, including audits, to ensure developers were not misusing the Facebook user’s data? How many users in the states of the signatory Attorneys General were impacted? When did Facebook learn of this breach of privacy protections? During this timeframe, what other third party “research” applications were also able to access the data of unsuspecting Facebook users?”, he asked.
Fox urged Facebook users to take advantage of ways to opt in or out of services the company provides.
Fox urges anyone with questions to log onto the Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection website.