Facebook Tries To Quiet Your Home Data Privacy Fears
Privacy? We totally respect your privacy!
Facebook announced Facebook Home yesterday, with five new phones from HTC and Samsung getting the screen interface on launch day, April 12.
Today, the social networking giant posted a bunch of questions and answers on Home and its planned data privacy, on a Facebook page entitled, simply, “Answering Your Questions on Home and Privacy.
The information on the web page explains that Facebook Home can be turned off if user wish, and that Facebook can be used on these phones without having Home enabled.
More interestingly, Facebook details some of its privacy plans, including how and what the Home interface will collect, including lists of apps you use via Home. Facebook will maintain this list, connected to your profile, for 90 days. The company will also collect information on which apps generate system notifications, which will again have identifying information removed from it after 90 days.
The page points out that the app notification data is only gathered from phones that have a pre-installed version of Home, so those of you pulling it to your current phone don’t have to worry about that.
Finally, Facebook points concerned users to its Data Use Policy, which covers Home privacy, as well as the company’s own posterior.
It looks like Facebook is trying to set privacy worries to rest, though we all know they can–and have–changed their privacy policies often and without notice. Here’s hoping that as Facebook changes its privacy policies to fit later versions of the Home software that we’l still be able to do what we want, when we want, without worrying about Facebook having our private data.
