Reuters: Regulatory News: UPDATE 1-French watchdog to continue Facebook glitch inquiry

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UPDATE 1-French watchdog to continue Facebook glitch inquiry Sep 25th 2012, 17:40 Tue Sep 25, 2012 1:40pm EDT PARIS, Sept 25 (Reuters) - France's data watchdog CNIL said it would continue an inquiry into how some users of Facebook Inc came to believe that their privacy had been infringed on the social network. The French government said early on Tuesday it had summoned Facebook managers to appear before the watchdog to explain an apparent data glitch. "It appears that additional investigations are needed to determine if private messages were indeed publicly available," the watchdog said in a statement. Two ministers said they had intervened after seeing reports that private messages between Facebook users in France had appeared on their "Timelines", which can reach a wide Internet audience. Metro newspaper reported that a "non-systemic" problem at Facebook had caused certain personal messages, some several years old, to be displayed on the Timelines which serve as profile pages with details selected by the user. Facebook France denied any breakdown in its security systems and said that while some old data had appeared where it should not have, none of it originated from private messages. "A minority of users were worried after seeing messages they thought to be private appearing on their Timelines," a spokesman for Facebook France said. "Facebook engineers examined the situation and confirmed that the messages in question were old postings, which had previously been visible on the users' profiles," he added. Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg and Small Businesses Minister Fleur Pellerin had called for "clear and transparent explanations" and said the episode demonstrated the need for better data protection. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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