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MySpace, Just the Latest Social Media Company to Settle with FTC Over Allegedly Misleading Privacy Policy
The average MySpace user might be forgiven for not knowing every nuance of MySpace’s approximately 2,500-word-long privacy policy. However, the privacy policy’s author—MySpace itself—enjoys no such leniency. MySpace is the latest Web 2.0 company that was dinged for, according to the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), not following its own user privacy rules. The Federal Trade Commission Act empowers the FTC to prevent “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” According to an FTC complaint, MySpace provided third-party advertisers with its users’ “Friend IDs”: unique identifiers which advertisers could then use to discover a trove of personal information, including, in most cases, the users’ full names. The problem, according to the FTC, was that MySpace had promised its users that advertisers would not have access to that type of personally identifiable information (“PII”). In particular, the FTC pointed to MySpace’s own privacy policy, which stated that “except as… Continue Reading
Cops Can Read Your Text Messages Without a Warrant
This article in Lawyers.com exlores the Washington State privacy act after the Court of Appeals in Washington rejected an argument that the state’s use of his text messages violated the privacy act. Providing commentary in the piece is Haynes and Boone, LLP Partner David Siegal.
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