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In regards to previous attacks against Facebook, the federal government announced a settlement on Dec. 29 that enforces the company honor the privacy wishes of its users and opens it to privacy audits for the next 20 years.
The Federal Trade Commission’s order is largely based on the fact that Facebook publicized information that its users had thought would be private.
In addition to this offense, the order stated that advertisers could gain the personal information of the users if they were to click on their advertisement.
“Facebook’s privacy issues doesn’t matter all that much to me,” stated Alan Jay, a junior at Carlmont. “I make sure not to click on the advertisements anyway.”
The order also claimed that Facebook was in fact sharing users’ personal information with outside sources and companies.
Although the order did not specifically accuse Facebook of committing any crimes, if the company did in fact violate any of the terms, they “would be liable to pay a penalty of $16,000 a day for each count,” stated the F.T.C.
Although Facebook creater Mark Zuckerburg admitted in his blog post that the company committed “a bunch of mistakes,” many of the issues mentioned in the order had already been fixed.
“This kind of makes me nervous, but I always make sure that my Facebook profile is set on private,” commented Rhonda Mokatrin, another junior at Carlmont.