Privacy groups petition FTC over Facebook tracking tools

Several major privacy groups have petitioned the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate serious concerns about Facebook's use of tracking tools as part of a recent redesign.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Digital Democracy are among the groups to have written to the FTC claiming that Facebook's use of tracking tools violates privacy laws.

The groups allege in the letter to FCC chairman Jon Leibowitz (PDF) that Facebook uses tracking cookies to log the activity of users without their knowledge.

"Facebook's tracking of post-log-out internet activity violates the reasonable expectations of consumers and the company's own privacy statements," the letter reads.

"Although Facebook has partially fixed the problem caused by its tracking cookies, the company still places persistent identifiers on users' browsers that collect post-log-out data and could be used to identify users."

Facebook unveiled the new features earlier this month, including include a new Timeline page layout and an updated news feed function.

The letter suggests that the updated news feed and sharing components go too far in collecting information on activity outside Facebook.

The groups allege that the new features track and display activity information even after a user has logged out of their account, and allow strangers to view user activities and wall content.

"Much of the data which Facebook now plans to publicise in new ways was shared by users who relied on a different privacy framework or, in the case of post-log-out tracking, on Facebook's representations of a different framework," the groups said.

"For users who wish to maintain something approaching their old privacy settings, Facebook has offered solutions that are confusing, impractical and unfair."

Facebook declined to comment.

This is not the first time that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has taken issue with Facebook's privacy controls. The group lodged a complaint earlier this year over the site's use of face recognition technology.