Since 2010, PayPal has been one of the main methods of payment for Facebook developers. But as Facebook grows, the company is changing its PayPal policies for new developers in emerging markets, such as China, Brazil, and India. According to TechCrunch, developers in several countries must show extra identification as a means of authentication, such as photo IDs or incorporation papers, in order to be paid via direct deposit.
It seems like Facebook’s privacy settings change almost on a weekly basis. A new iOS application from Germany, Kleek, hopes to make browsing and posting to Facebook from mobile phones a simpler experience. Kleek allows users to essentially create their own algorithms, filtering a news feed to see the friends and pages they want to see and giving users control over who sees what they post.
The data-protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Thilo Weichert, took his campaign against Facebook’s insistence that users provide their real names up a notch, threatening to fine the social network £16,000 ($20,877) if it refuses to abolish that policy.
Facebook and Germany are at odds again, this time over whether the social network’s insistence that users provide their real names conflicts with the country’s data-protection law that permits the use of pseudonyms.
Facebook is facing more privacy issues in Germany, as the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) filed suit against the social network, claiming that applications available via its app center automatically access users’ data without consent.
Despite the fact that it’s difficult to go online these days without tripping over post after post after post after post about how Facebook and the employment part of people’s lives do not mix well, it’s also difficult to go online and not find studies showing that these warnings are being ignored, and the latest comes by way of AVG Technologies.
Mobile payment platform Bango announced that its integration with Facebook, first revealed in February, is live, and the social network’s users in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany can now purchase items such as virtual gifts and game credits and be billed via their mobile carriers.
Facebook appeared to have settled concerns within the European Union over its use of facial-recognition technology with Friday’s announcement of an agreement between the social network and Ireland’s Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, but the memo apparently never made it to Hamburg, Germany.
Irish eyes (and those of the rest of the European Union) are finally smiling on Facebook, as Ireland’s Office of the Data Protection Commissioner announced that “the great majority” of the privacy recommendations it made to the social network to keep it in compliance with those of the EU have been “fully implemented to the satisfaction of this office.” The major concession by Facebook: Its tag suggest feature, which enabled facial recognition for Facebook photos, has been turned off for all new users in the EU, with existing users to lose access to the feature by Oct. 15.
Not long after Germany reopened its investigation into Facebook’s facial-recognition technology, a German consumer group sent the social network a cease-and-desist letter. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations is ordering Facebook to quit giving third-party applications users’ data without their consent. If the social network doesn’t do this by Sept. 4, the Germans plan to sue.
