Students from the University of Ottawa, Canada have filed an official complaint against Facebook, citing that the website breaches Canadian privacy laws.The complaint, made to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, states that the US-based site has committed 22 violations of Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which could see the social networking darling in hot water. the issue was raised by law students at the University of Ottawa who studied Facebook's policies and business practices as part of their university course, according to the National Post.
In a 35-page report submitted to the Federal privacy commissioner, the students claim that Facebook's privacy settings and terms of use are cumbersome and hidden in a fashion which make them difficult to be picked up and understood by many younger users of the site, or those users who are new to the internet and social networking in particular.
The complaint also alleges that the website's default privacy settings are set to allow for the maximum amount of data-sharing with other users, rather than for privacy with the option to opt-in for sharing information and that Facebook fails to provide a valid opt-out option. Under Canadian law, the disclosure of sensitive information, such as a person's address, date of birth, educational background, sexual preference and marital status must have the express consent of the person concerned. However, Facebook's default settings can mean that people may unknowingly - and falsely - grant consent for their personal details to be shared.
The complainants found that even if a user were to change their own personal settings to the strongest security settings available, their personal information was still at risk if any friends on their network had lower privacy settings. It was also found that most third-party applications required access to personal information before it could be added, even though such information was not needed for the application to operate.
In a statement, Lisa Feinburg and Harley Finkelstein, two of the students involved in the complaint said:
"We're concerned that Facebook is deceiving its users; Facebook purports to provide users with a high level of control over their data. But our investigation found that this is not entirely true."
Other allegations launched against Facebook in the report include: failing to destroy the personal information of users who close their Facebook accounts and failing to provide necessary precautions to safeguard users' accounts from unauthorized access. It is also claimed Facebook fails to inform and identify the purposes for which it obtains personal information.
Facebook, however, refuted the claims and said the complaint has "serious factual errors" and ignores key elements of the company's policy, but it would work with the Privacy Commission to "set the record straight". Under Canadian law, the privacy commissioner has up to one year to investigate the complaint and make recommendations, although Facebook would be under no obligation to effect any changes that might be recommended.
Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg - ironically from a University dormitory - and now has around 70 million registered users worldwide - including around seven million Canadians. Facebook has been the subject of intense takeover speculation in recent times, with both Google and Microsoft showing an interest in its acquisition. Microsoft have since purchased a small holding stake, which valued Facebook at around $15 billion and have more recently again been linked with increasing its holding in the wake its failure to acquire Yahoo!.
