Feb 20, 2019
Facebook 'failed to protect’ health data in private groups
The Federal Trade Commission was told the company had failed to protect the privacy of those in patient health and other groups. The privacy of Facebook groups was brought into question last year when members of a restricted-access Facebook group for women with the Brca gene mutation discovered that their details could be downloaded by third parties. While Facebook has made changes to close security loopholes, the complaint says that, under US law, the social media giant should have notified users of the downloading of their data. Using Facebook patient health groups is "Effectively a game of privacy roulette in which users are unable to know in advance which 'connections' will hurt them by downloading the data from posts in closed and secret groups", it says. In response, Facebook said: "It's intentionally clear to people that when they join any group on Facebook, other members of that group can see that they are a part of that community and can see the posts they choose to share with that community," it said.
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