10 August 2012: The Federal Trade Commission has finalized the terms of a settlement with Facebook first announced in November of 2011, the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) reports. The settlement follows from complaints filed by EPIC and other consumer and privacy organizations in 2009 and 2010 over Facebook’s decision to change its users’ privacy settings in a way that made users’ personal information more widely available to the public and to Facebook’s business partners. The settlement bars Facebook from changing privacy settings without the affirmative consent of users or misrepresenting the privacy or security of users’ personal information.
Read more about the FTC settlement with Facebook from the Electronic Privacy Information Centre at http://epic.org/2012/08/ftc-finalizes-settlement-with.html