Skip to main content

Canada Opens New Facebook Privacy Inquiry

Facebook
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Canada’s privacy commissioner has announced a second investigation into privacy practices at Facebook, focusing on the new privacy tool Facebook rolled out to its hundreds of millions of members back in December 2009. The new policy, which has been derided as sharing all user’s information with everybody all the time, requires users to review their privacy settings and explicitly select what portions of their profiles, posts, and streams are available to other users. However, the default privacy settings for the tool are to share as much information as possible, a stance Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as described as a new “social norm.”

Recommended Videos

The new investigation stems from a new public complaint about Facebook’s privacy practices. “The individual’s complaint mirrors some of the concerns that our Office has heard and expressed to Facebook in recent months,” said Assistant Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, in a statement. “Some Facebook users are disappointed by certain changes being made to the site—changes that were supposed to strengthen their privacy and the protection of their personal information.”

Denham lead the original investigation into Facebook’s handling of personal information.

Back in mid-2009, Canada’s privacy commission threatened to take Facebook to court over its privacy practices, saying the social networkign services had “serious gaps” in the way it managed users’ personal information. Facebook’s privacy revamp at the end of 2009 was intended, in part, to address those concerns. In the wake the Canadian privacy commissioner’s initial investigation, Facebook agreed to implement a slate of changes to its site within a year.

In the United States, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has lodged a similar complaint about Facebook’s new privacy practices with the Federal Trade Commission.

Facebook had consistently maintained that any changes to privacy settings recommended by its new privacy tool are repeatedly showed to users, who much explicitly accept those changes.

Geoff Duncan
Former Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Topics
OpenAI just announced a new AI model, and it’s arriving in a couple of weeks
A laptop screen shows the home page for ChatGPT, OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot.

OpenAI’s latest reasoning model, o3 mini, is now official, with the company’s CEO, Sam Altman having recently shared details about the technology on X. He noted the model should be ready for rollout in a couple weeks with availability for API and ChatGPT users up at the same time.

The update comes not long after OpenAI released its o1 and o1 mini model series in December. Those models provided more detailed processing of queries, as well as improved writing, and error detection in code. The upcoming o3 mini model is intended to be an improvement still on those models, with a focus on excelling in challenging science, code, and math queries. The overall intent of the model is to perform as well as a large language model in a lightweight form.

Read more
Intel quietly opens preorders on new Arrow Lake CPUs
Fingers holding an Intel 285K.

With CES 2025 right around the corner, most of us expect the big announcements to arrive in a week -- but some companies are already teasing new products. In Intel's case, the manufacturer plans to add more CPUs that might compete against some of the best processors. To that end, Intel has now announced preorders for new Arrow Lake CPUs, but most of us can't get our hands on them yet.

As spotted by VideoCardz, Intel China announced that preorders for the Core Ultra 200 non-K CPUs are opening today, with availability planned for January 13. These CPUs will presumably just be non-overclockable versions of existing Arrow Lake chips, such as the Core Ultra 9 285K. In its announcement, Intel teases "new architecture" and "better power consumption."

Read more
Save up to $700 on these Dell Canada Black Friday limited-quantity deals
Woman on laptop bought during Dell Canada Black Friday deals event edited

As you'd expect, the Dell Canada Black Friday deals are now live and these are some of the lowest prices of the year. But there's a twist or two in store. First, many of the deals available are limited-quantity deals which means once they sell out, that's it, they're sold out. Second, there are a wide variety of products on sale, from AI-ready PCs to laptops, monitors, accessories, and more. And finally,  Dell Members can earn double the rewards on purchases up until November 27. Dell Rewards, if you're not familiar with it, allows you to earn 3% back on purchases, normally, and get free expedited delivery. Either way, now's your chance to save up to $700 on AI-ready PCs and more, don't miss out.

 
What to shop in these Dell Canada Black Friday deals
You get easily distracted by huge sales like this if you're anything like me. There are just so many great prices, so many different options, and too many choices. I believe they call that choice paralysis. At any rate, it helps to have someone else pick out a few interesting or top deals, so that's precisely what I'm going to do.

Read more