Business

Facebook and the FTC today finalized their earlier announced settlement over charges that Facebook had “deceived” its customers by “telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public.” Unlike this week’s earlier $22.5 million FTC settlement with Google, Facebook does not face any financial penalties. Instead, the company will have to promise that it will give its users “clear and prominent notice” and get their consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings. In addition, Facebook will have to submit itself to biennial privacy audits for the next 20 years and maintain a “comprehensive privacy program.” The FTC launched its investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices in 2011 and the two organizations first announced that they had settled the charges last November. Today’s announcement marks the end of the public comment period and finalizes the settlement agreement. Here are the de...

It is frighteningly easy to dupe the public with statistics, since most journalists and readers aren’t trained in all the sophisticated ways pollsters can make subtle changes to research that make a gigantic difference in the outcome. Recently, a near-paranoid picture of the American public made its way around the media cycle, thanks to a “study” commissioned by TrustE, a web security company, on privacy. Since we know you want to be intelligent readers, and you can’t always depend on journalists to recognize a bad statistic, we thought we’d show you how to spot a misleading study using the report’s glaringly bad methodology. 1. Beware of really high or low percentages. A sizable chunk of the American electorate is shockingly ignorant. As of 2008, 30% still believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and 18% believe the sun revolves around the earth. Any truly representative survey will reflect uneducated respondents and therefore will have a buffer away from 100% and 0%,...