Facebook doesn’t comply with South Korean privacy laws because it doesn’t ask for users’ consent before getting their personal data, a South Korean regulator said Wednesday.
“Facebook violates the regulations on protection of privacy in information networks,” says Choi Seong Jin, a spokesman for the Korea Communications Commission.
Article 22 of South Korea’s “Act on Promotion of Information and Communication Network Utilization and Information Protection” states that an information and communication service provider must obtain user consent if it intends to gather users’ personal data.
Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which all Facebook users must agree with to use the service, as well as Facebook’s Privacy Policy, cover this topic in detail:
“For content that is covered by intellectual property rights (…) you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.”
Many users, however, don’t read the fine print; it’s possible that the KCC wants Facebook to explain this to users more clearly and explicitly before they sign up for the service.
Facebook has had its share of privacy-related troubles in the past; most recently, it caught some heat over the launch of its Open Graph.
The company has 30 days to respond to the complaint.
[via ComputerWorld]
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Gilmanshin
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