Your Facebook Information is not Secret anymore

Your Facebook Information is not Secret anymore.  24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

Posted on Thursday 13 October 2011

If you are interested in social networks, don’t miss the slick video about Max Schrems’ David and Goliath struggle with Facebook over the way they are treating his personal information.  Click on the red “CC” in the lower right-hand corner to see the English subtitles.
Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues.  In Europe there is a requirement that entities with data about individuals make it available to them if they request it.  That’s how Max ended up with a personalized CD from Facebook that he printed out on a stack of paper more than a thousand pages thick (see image below). Analysing it, he came to the conclusion that Facebook is engineered to break many of the requirements of European data protection.  He argues that the record Facebook provided him finds them to be in flagrante delicto.  
The logical next step was a series of 22 lucid and well-reasoned complaints that he submitted to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (Facebook states that European users have a relationship with the Irish Facebook subsidiary).  This was followed by another perfectly executed move:  setting up a web site called Europe versus Facebook that does everything right in terms using web technology to mount a campaign against a commercial enterprise that depends on its public relations to succeed.
Europe versus Facebook, which seems eventually to have become an organization, then opened its own YouTube channel.  As part of the documentation, they publicised the procedure Max used to get his personal CD.  Somehow this recipe found its way toreddit  where it ended up on a couple of top ten lists.  So many people applied for their own CDs that Facebook had to send out an email indicating it was unable to comply with the requirement that it provide the information within a 40 day period.
If that seems to be enough, it’s not all.  As Max studied what had been revealed to him, he noticed that important information was missing and asked for the rest of it.  The response ratchets the battle up one more notch:

Dear Mr. Schrems:
We refer to our previous correspondence and in particular your subject access request dated July 11, 2011 (the Request).
To date, we have disclosed all personal data to which you are entitled pursuant to Section 4 of the Irish Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 (the Acts).
Please note that certain categories of personal data are exempted from subject access requests.
Pursuant to Section 4(9) of the Acts, personal data which is impossible to furnish or which can only be furnished after disproportionate effort is exempt from the scope of a subject access request. We have not furnished personal data which cannot be extracted from our platform in the absence of is proportionate effort.
Section 4(12) of the Acts carves out an exception to subject access requests where the disclosures in response would adversely affect trade secrets or intellectual property. We have not provided any information to you which is a trade secret or intellectual property of Facebook Ireland Limited or its licensors.
Please be aware that we have complied with your subject access request, and that we are not required to comply with any future similar requests, unless, in our opinion, a reasonable period of time has elapsed.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Facebook User Operations Data Access Request Team

What a spotlight
This throws intense light on some amazingly important issues.
For example, as I wrote here (and Max describes here), Facebook’s “Like” button collects information every time an Internet user views a page containing the button, and a Facebook cookie associates that page with all the other pages with “Like” buttons visited by the user in the last 3 months.
If you use Facebook, records of all these visits are linked, through cookies, to your Facebook profile - even if you never click the “like” button.  These long lists of pages visited, tied in Facebook’s systems to your “Real Name identity”, were not included on Max’s CD.
Is Facebook prepared to argue that it need not reveal this stored information about your personal data because doing so would adversely affect its “intellectual property”?
It will be absolutely amazing to watch how this issue plays out, and see just what someone with Max’s media talent is able to do with the answers once they become public.
The result may well impact the whole industry for a long time to come.

Meanwhile, students of these matters would do well to look at Max’s many complaints:

no date topic status files 01 18-AUG-2011 Pokes. Pokes are kept even after the user “removes” them. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 02 18-AUG-2011 Shadow Profiles. Facebook is collecting data about people without their knowledge. This information is used to substitute existing profiles and to create profiles of non-users. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 03 18-AUG-2011 Tagging.Tags are used without the specific consent of the user. Users have to “untag” themselves (opt-out). Info: Facebook announced changes. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 04 18-AUG-2011 Synchronizing. Facebook is gathering personal data e.g. via its iPhone-App or the “friend finder”. This data is used by Facebook without the consent of the data subjects. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 05 18-AUG-2011 Deleted Postings. Postings that have been deleted showed up in the set of data that was received from Facebook. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 06 18-AUG-2011 Postings on other Users’ Pages. Users cannot see the settings under which content is distributed that they post on other’s pages. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 07 18-AUG-2011 Messages. Messages (incl. Chat-Messages) are stored by Facebook even after the user “deleted” them. This means that all direct communication on Facebook can never be deleted. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 08 18-AUG-2011 Privacy Policy and Consent. The privacy policy is vague, unclear and contradictory. If European and Irish standards are applied, the consent to the privacy policy is not valid. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 09 18-AUG-2011 Face Recognition. The new face recognition feature is an inproportionate violation of the users right to privacy. Proper information and an unambiguous consent of the users is missing. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 10 18-AUG-2011 Access Request. Access Requests have not been answered fully. Many categories of information are missing. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 11 18-AUG-2011 Deleted Tags. Tags that were “removed” by the user, are only deactivated but saved by Facebook. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 12 18-AUG-2011 Data Security. In its terms, Facebook says that it does not guarantee any level of data security. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 13 18-AUG-2011 Applications. Applications of “friends” can access data of the user. There is no guarantee that these applications are following European privacy standards. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 14 18-AUG-2011 Deleted Friends. All removed friends are stored by Facebook. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 15 18-AUG-2011 Excessive processing of Data. Facebook is hosting enormous amounts of personal data and it is processing all data for its own purposes. It seems Facebook is a prime example of illegal “excessive processing”. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 16 18-AUG-2011 Opt-Out. Facebook is running an opt-out system instead of an opt-in system, which is required by European law. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 24-AUG-2011 Letter from the Irish DPC. Letter (PDF) 15-SEPT-2011 Letter to the Irish DPC concerning the new privacy policy and new settings on Facebook. Letter (PDF) 17 19-SEPT-2011 Like Button. The Like Button is creating extended user data that can be used to track users all over the internet. There is no legitimate purpose for the creation of the data. Users have not consented to the use. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 18 19-SEPT-2011 Obligations as Processor. Facebook has certain obligations as a provider of a “cloud service” (e.g. not using third party data for its own purposes or only processing data when instructed to do so by the user). Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 19 19-SEPT-2011 Picture Privacy Settings. The privacy settings only regulate who can see the link to a picture. The picture itself is “public” on the internet. This makes it easy to circumvent the settings. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 20 19-SEPT-2011 Deleted Pictures. Facebook is only deleting the link to pictures. The pictures are still public on the internet for a certain period of time (more than 32 hours). Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 21 19-SEPT-2011 Groups. Users can be added to groups without their consent. Users may end up in groups that lead other to false impressions about a person. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP) 22 19-SEPT-2011 New Policies. The policies are changed very frequently, users do not get properly informed, they are not asked to consent to new policies. Filed with the Irish DPC Complaint (PDF) Attachments (ZIP)

Source:  Kim Cameron's Identity Blog