Facebook to roll out global privacy settings hub — thanks to GDPR
Adsero Security is unique in the IT security industry. Integrity, honesty, and fairness are the core of who we are. We also like to highlight businesses that enforce this same model. Facebook is making some changes to its privacy setting so that its users will be safer. We applaud that action. Read on to find out more.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has said major privacy changes are coming to the platform later this year, as it prepares to comply with the European Union’s incoming data protection regulation.
Speaking at a Facebook event in Brussels yesterday, she said the company will be “rolling out a new privacy center globally that will put the core privacy settings for Facebook in one place and make it much easier for people to manage their data” (via Reuters).
Last year the company told us it had assembled “the largest cross-functional team” in the history of its family of companies to support General Data Protection Regulation (aka GDPR) compliance.
From May 25 this year, the updated privacy framework will apply across the 28 Member State bloc — and any multinationals processing European citizens’ personal data will need to ensure they are compliant. Not least because the regulation includes beefed-up liabilities for companies that fail to meet its standards. Under GDPR, penalties can scale as large as 4% of a company’s global turnover.
In Facebook’s case, based on its 2016 full-year revenue, the new rules mean it could be facing fines that exceed a billion dollars — giving the company a rather more sizable incentive to ensure it meets the EU’s privacy standards and isn’t found to be playing fast and loose with users’ data.
Sandberg said the incoming changes will give the company “a very good foundation to meet all the requirements of the GDPR and to spur us on to continue investing in products and in educational tools to protect privacy”.
“Our apps have long been focused on giving people transparency and control,” she also remarked — a claim that any long-time Facebook user might laugh at rather long and hard. Read more »