Influential EU privacy body adds their name to criticism of Facebook’s change to user profile preferences

The Article 29 Working Party – a group representing data protection regulators across the European Union’s 27 Member States – has added its voice to the criticism of Facebook’s change to user preferences at the end of last year. It has said: ‘It is unacceptable that the company fundamentally changed the default settings on its social-networking platform to the detriment of a user.’ Last year, Facebook changed the default settings. Although users had to confirm or change the new default settings before they kicked in, this was highly controversial as a lot of people simply go with the default that is suggested. As a result of the changes, more of people’s information – such as details of addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, family, relationships, employer, birthdays and religious details – could be accessed by wider circles of people or even the Internet as a whole.