Facebook has released a report calling for clearer user data privacy policies and notes that current practices are “insufficient.”
“The current practices for informing people about how companies use their data, and the laws setting out transparency requirements, may be insufficient to provide meaningful notice to people,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, writes in the report.
The paper highlights the need for companies to better communicate privacy information by putting people at the centre of privacy design decisions.
Egan writes that customer privacy policies are often difficult for people to find and comprehend. She notes that it can also be counter-productive to present important information through push notifications because people may not always read them.
The report outlines the importance of communicating information about privacy and aims to encourage more global conversation on the topic while proposing some promising paths forwards through policy co-creation and design.
Facebook has been heavily scrutinized for its privacy and data policies numerous times in recent years. The social media giant pledged to change and improve its privacy practices after it was fined $5 billion USD (about $6.7 billion CAD) last year by the Federal Trade Commission.
The paper includes suggestions and observations for regulators and policy advocates, as countries around the world are beginning to crack down on data collection practices.
Source: Facebook
