Facebook to overhaul privacy and security amid data collection scandals

Facebook announced Wednesday that it will overhaul its privacy and security settings as fallout from the Cambridge Analytica and smartphone data gathering scandals continue to cause problems for the social media behemoth with the public, Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and private law firms.

“The last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies, and to help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data,” said Erin Egan, vice president and chief privacy officer, policy, and Ashlie Beringer, vice president and deputy general counsel, in a statement.

“So in addition to Mark’s announcements last week — cracking down on abuse of the Facebook platform, strengthening our policies, and making it easier for people to revoke apps’ ability to use your data — we’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people in more control over their privacy. Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.”

The changes come after the Federal Trade Commission announced it was investigating the company and a law firm announced a lawsuit alleging mismanagement surrounding the release of private information.

In conclusion, they said that “in the coming weeks, we’ll be proposing updates to Facebook’s terms of service that include our commitments to people.”

“We’ll also update our data policy to better spell out what data we collect and how we use it. These updates are about transparency — not about gaining new rights to collect, use, or share data,” Egan and Beringer said.

Facebook rolled out in January an update to its privacy and security information area known as “Privacy Basics” that was intended to help user understand how to manage their privacy on the platform.