Facebook raises concerns among US congressmen

Not so long ago on Habré there was news that the Pentagon asks the media not to distribute secret information about US military campaigns in different countries. Now the US Congress is concerned about security issues, though not about WikiLieaks, congressmen are worried about data leaks from Facebook - we are talking about personal data of users. So, two congressmen, Edward Markey and Joe Barton, sent an open letter to the creator and permanent leader of the social networking site Facebook, demanding to make the resource more secure for users.

So, a couple of days ago, the authoritative publication The Washington Post wrote a note that many millions of users of this social network, unwittingly, sent personal information to third-party companies. Congressmen are concerned about a similar problem, and especially the problem of confidentiality of information of minor users.
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It is worth noting that in the United States, Zynga (the most famous product of this company, FarmVille, which literally got in the way of many people, including a couple of senators, which cost them their careers), is the No. 1 social network in the world and the main supplier of applications for this resource. lawsuits. The plaintiffs believe that both companies should be more serious about the safety of personal data of users, and do everything possible so that the work of people in a social network becomes really confidential (although, by definition, a social network cannot be completely confidential, isolating users from each other ).

It is clear that the company’s representatives gathered to seriously defend their interests, stating that lawsuits have no basis. According to some network security experts, the disadvantage of a social network is that a third party can easily get the identification numbers of Facebook users. And having this data, you can get other user information, including phone number, address, name and other data, of course, if the user has not set the appropriate privacy settings.

Interestingly, how would congressmen react to the fact that most of the users of the national social network have never heard of any security settings ... Actually, who is to blame for the fact that the user does not set the necessary settings in the appropriate section?

In the meantime, as we see, the problem is considered very serious. At least in the USA.

Via wsj