If you looked at the recent tweaks to Facebook's privacy controls and thought that some of your settings had been changed to expose more of your content to the outside world than ever before, you're not alone. At least one Facebook user has filed a complaint with the Canadian government about exactly that, and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said this morning that it's opening an investigation into the matter. According to the Commissioner's office, the probe "focuses on a tool introduced by Facebook in mid-December 2009, which required users to review their privacy settings. The complainant alleges that the new default settings would have made his information more readily available than the settings he had previously put in place." Assistant Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham was quoted in a statement announcing the probe that:
"The individual's complaint mirrors some of the concerns that our Office has heard and expressed to Facebook in recent months. Some Facebook users are disappointed by certain changes being made to the site - changes that were supposed to strengthen their privacy and the protection of their personal information."
Facebook, meanwhile, says that it went to significant effort to inform users of the changes and what was involved.
