The Federal Trade Commission today announced a settlement with Myspace over the social network's improper handling of users' personal information.
According to the agency, Myspace promised not to share its users' "Friend ID" without permission, but disclosed it to advertisers nonetheless.
A Friend ID is a persistent, unique identifier attached to each Myspace profile that includes data like age, gender, profile picture, display name, and a user's full name. It can also include information like pictures, hobbies, interests, and lists of users' friends.
Myspace's privacy policy promised to keep this data under wraps unless granted express permission to share it. But according to the FTC, Myspace provided advertisers with the Friend ID of users who were viewing particular pages on the site.
"Advertisers could use the Friend ID to locate a user's Myspace profile to obtain personal information publicly available on the profile and, in most instances, the user's full name," the FTC said. "Advertisers also could combine the user's real name and other personal information with additional information to link broader Web-browsing activity to a specific individual."
That, the FTC said, violated federal law. As a result, Myspace must implement a comprehensive privacy program and submit to regular privacy audits for the next 20 years.
The move comes about 1.5 years after Myspace promised to encrypt Myspace user IDs, use anonymous identifiers, and not deal with data brokers amidst reports that Myspace user IDs were shared with ad networks and data brokers.
The social network was acquired from News Corp. last year by Specific Media for a reported $35 million.
In a statement, Specific Media said it "thoroughly examine[d] the company's business practices and, where applicable, make improvements" following last year's purchase.
"A major focus of this review was to ensure that Myspace delivered advertisements to consumers in a manner that safeguarded their privacy," Specific Media continued. "Applying our expertise in online advertising, we successfully improved upon Myspace's historical practices, bringing the social media platform to the forefront of industry best practice for ad delivery."
Today's settlement, the company said, "put any questions regarding Myspace's pre-acquisition advertising practices behind us."
Specific Media noted that other tech firms have entered into similar arrangements with the FTC of late. Indeed, Facebook in November agreed to a deal after the agency found that Facebook "deceived customers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public." After the Google Buzz snafu, meanwhile, Google reached a similar deal in October.
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