Over the past few weeks this blog has been alive with stories of Facebook's numerous security breaches, gross infringements of privacy and failures to protect personal data from third parties.
These failings have now drawn the attention of Democratic Congressman Ed Markey and Republican Joe Barton who have contacted the website's founder Mark Zuckerberg to express their concern "third-party applications gathered and transmitted personally identifiable information about Facebook users and those users' friends".
According to the Wall Street Journal, "the letter asked Mr. Zuckerberg how many users had been affected by the [security] breaches" which involved personal details being transmitted to private companies "when Facebook became aware of it, and what changes Facebook plans in order to deal with the problem". The Congressman have requested to receive a full reply by October 27th, the details of which will be posted on this blog.
The two Congressman, who chair the bi-partisan Privacy Caucus in the House of Representatives have already led investigations into concerns at the iPhone's privacy settings and the data retention policies of fifteen of America's largest websites.
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By Daniel Hamilton.
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