Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee have sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, demanding answers about the company's latest privacy scandal.
The US lawmakers sent their letter today (PDF) after a group of privacy experts revealed yesterday that they filed a complaint against Facebook with the US Federal Trade Commission last December.
The complaint includes 43 pages (available here as a PDF), and accuses Facebook of misleading users who belong to its “closed” groups.
According to a report , a Facebook group administrator discovered that a Chrome extension allowed advertisers to collect the names and emails of users in “closed” Facebook groups.
He claimed that the company is misleading users into thinking that “closed” groups are completely private. In reality, the company is allowing third-party apps to collect sensitive information.
This does not seem to be a problem for the majority of Facebook users, otherwise the continuous increase in members of the social network cannot be explained. However, for members of “closed” groups, this behavior could at least be considered harassment.
“This consumer complaint raises several concerns about Facebook’s privacy policies and practices,” Energy and Commerce Committee officials said in their open letter.
“Marking these groups as closed may mislead Facebook users into joining them and revealing more personal information than they would normally reveal.”
What will happen now? Mark will answer and reassure everyone, until the next scandal. Do you really think that at some point the largest social network will stop making money from its members?
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