22 Jun 2010

Privacy settings 'down to service providers'

The onus is on service providers to ensure their privacy settings are strong enough to safeguard users from data loss, or worse, it has been revealed.

Anita Coles, policy officer at Liberty, said social networking sites in particular must be made aware of the dangers of users posting personal information and, as such, it should be up to these service providers to protect their users.

She commented: "There is an onus on the companies to make sure that they are acting in a way that [ensures] people know what the privacy settings are and to make it very clear and accessible to ensure that [users'] data is made private."

According to social networking website Facebook, new privacy settings will allow users of the service to control exactly who sees the information they post on the site.

The company hopes this will help manage the problem of personal information being posted online and then being used by criminals.