The New York Times reports on a letter Facebook sent last month to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., about how it monitors the sharing of users' data with device makers. PricewaterhouseCoopers (now PwC), which was selected as an auditor after a U.S. Federal Trade Commission consent decree with Facebook, concluded that Facebook had "loose oversight" over those partnerships and found "limited evidence" Facebook checked partners' compliance with Facebook's data-use policy. Wyden, who recently released a draft privacy law, said, "It's not good enough to just take the word of Facebook — or any major corporation — that they're safeguarding our personal information." The Times' report also puts the effectiveness of the FTC's consent decrees under the spotlight. "Facebook," the report states, "like other companies under FTC consent decree, largely dictates the scope of each assessment," but a "Wyden aide who reviewed the unredacted assessments said they contained no evidence that Facebook had ever addressed the original problem." Facebook said it takes "the FTC consent order incredibly seriously and have for years submitted to extensive assessments of our systems." (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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