http://www.todayonline.com/Technology/EDC121127-0000070/Privacy-groups-ask-Facebook-to-withdraw-proposed-policy-changes
The changes, which Facebook unveiled last Wednesday, raise privacy risks for users and violate the company's previous commitments to its roughly 1 billion members, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.
By sharing information with Instagram, the groups' joint letter said, Facebook could combine user profiles, ending its practice of keeping user information on the two services separate.
Facebook declined to comment on the letter.
In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the US Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended.
Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.
Facebook, Google and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.
Facebook unveiled a variety of proposed changes to its terms of service and data use polices on Wednesday, including a move to scrap a four-year-old process that can allow the social network's roughly 1 billion users to vote on changes to its policies.
If proposed changes generate more than 7,000 public comments during a seven-day period, Facebook's current terms of service automatically trigger a vote by users to approve the changes. But the vote is only binding if at least 30 per cent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.
The latest proposed changes had garnered more than 17,000 comments by late yesterday.
Facebook also said last week that it wanted to eliminate a setting for users to control who can contact them on the social network's email system.
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