Facebook bans spying on its network
Facebook has blocked companies from using its social networks for surveillance purposes.
An update to Facebook and Instagram's (which is owned by Facebook) terms will stop developers from using data to track and monitor users. The new clause states that comapnies and agencies can no longer "use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance"
Recently, Facebook learned that several companies had used information posted on its networks to track billions of users.
"Over the past several months we have taken enforcement action against developers who created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of our existing policies; we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply," said Facebook's Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Rob Sherman.
The changes mean that companies can no longer create tools that track protests, names or conduct other monitoring on Facebook and Instagram.
Were you aware that companies were using Facebook and Instagram to track your activities?
Think Facebook is the least of the worries.
Re ’tracking’, there are always always the ‘tracking cookies’ that are accumulated in your browser of choice ... an important tool of 'trade' used by most major and many other websites these days.
These cookies send messages to the visited site/retailer and ad companies about your logins, orders, visits, browsing history, etc.
Ad companies love them.
What are cookies?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
:) Love the fact that if you clear the cookies in your browser preferences … like Arnie ’They’re back!’ … very soon after.
Just searched mine with the term ‘ad’ … over 150 and I only cleared them a couple of days ago.
It's about time. From the article
We are committed to building a community where people can feel safe making their voices heard. Our approach involves making careful decisions every day about how we use and protect data at Facebook. We also adopt policies that limit how developers, advertisers, and others can use our platform.
Over the years, we have learned the importance of updating these policies to offer more clarity or incorporate constructive feedback. These changes help us improve our community and discourage unwanted behavior. For example, we recently updated our Advertising Policies (https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/) to ban ads that promote payday loans, and we prohibited companies from using Facebook data to make decisions about whether to approve or reject a loan application. Late last year, we updated our Advertising Policies to more explicitly prohibit various kinds of discriminatory advertising (https://www.facebook.com/…/prohibi…/discriminatory_practices).
Today we are adding language to our Facebook and Instagram platform policies to more clearly explain that developers cannot “use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.” Our goal is to make our policy explicit. Over the past several months we have taken enforcement action against developers who created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of our existing policies; we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply.
We're grateful for community leaders like the American Civil Liberties Union of California, Color of Change, and the Center for Media Justice, who worked with us for the past several months on this update and have helped bring public attention to this important issue while advocating for positive change. For example, ACLU of California will discuss social media surveillance with a panel of experts at the SXSW conference later today.
We will continue using our policies to support our community, and we hope that these efforts will help encourage other companies to take positive steps as well.
Facebook Platform Policy: https://developers.facebook.com/policy
Instagram Platform Policy: https://www.instagram.com/about/legal/terms/api/
Rob Sherman is Deputy Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook.