Facebook Defends Privacy Policies

Ahead of a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing July 28 on online privacy, Facebook's top lobbyist wrote Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) to defend concerns that the social networking site shares user data with third parties without users permission.

In the letter to Chairman Conyers, Facebook Director of Public Policy Tim Sparapani responded to a request from Conyers for information on Facebook's privacy policies and with whom the firm shares user data. "The question posed in your letter asks whether Facebook shares users' personal information with third parties without the knowledge of users," Sparapani said. "The answer is simple and straightforward: we do not. We have designed our system and policies so that user information is never shared without our users' knowledge." Sparapani also outlined Facebook's efforts to improve its privacy settings and how it deals with outside parties. On advertisers, he said Facebook "provides advertisers only with anonymous, aggregated data, such as the number of users in a particular state who clicked on a specific ad."