Privacy Groups Urge Further Action from Facebook

Social networking giant Facebook has been urged to take more substantial steps to improve user privacy.

A number of privacy advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, advocating greater control for users of the social networking over their personal information, enabling them to decide what information they wish to share with third parties.

Facebook came in for stiff criticism in April after unveiling new tools for sharing user data, resulting in an overhaul of privacy options on the platform.

Despite climbdown by Facebook, which included an overhaul aimed at simplifying users' privacy controls, privacy groups have listed a number of other issue they believe need to be addressed.

Facebook's 'app gap' is one such loop hole. This loophole allows a third party to access certain elements of a user's profile information, despite the user never having run the application.

Other issues include changing the 'instant personalisation' option, and providing encrypted HTTPS connections for greater privacy.

In their letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg, the privacy advocacy groups said: “We are writing to urge you to continue to demonstrate your commitment to the principle of giving users control over how and with whom they share by taking these additional steps”.