OTTAWA, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Facebook has made sufficient changes in the past year to be in line with Canada's privacy laws, the government's privacy commissioner says.
In July 2009, privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart ruled Facebook operated outside the country's private-sector privacy laws, but she said the social media site has made enough changes since then to bring it in line with what's required, Postmedia News reported Wednesday.
"The investigation has resulted in many significant changes. Facebook has put in place measures to limit the sharing of personal information with third-party application developers and is now providing users with clear information about its privacy practices," Stoddart said.
"A major concern during our investigation was that third-party developers of games and other applications on the site had virtually unrestricted access to Facebook users' personal information."
Facebook now uses a permissions model, albeit an imperfect one which Stoddart says leaves "room for improvement in some areas."
"We've asked Facebook to continue to improve its oversight of application developers and to better educate them about their privacy responsibilities," she said.
The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which registered the initial privacy complaint against Facebook, accuses it of still operating outside of Canadian privacy law, Postmedia said.
