A few days ago, raised the question of privacy regarding Facebook, and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was criticized for it worldwide. It leads to the speculation of enforcing a strict new European privacy law. Now Facebook has started showing pop-up notifications in Messenger asking its users to check their privacy settings before the new law kicks in. The pop-up was noted by Business Insider on Wednesday. The pop-up appears when anyone opens the Facebook Messenger app, and it simply reads: “Important Updates to Review. Please review your data settings by 25th May to continue using Messenger.” The users need to click on the ‘Review Now’ prompt, which will take the user to their mobile Facebook Messenger settings. But it has been reported that the link is not working yet, so it might still be in its testing mode, waiting to roll out.
Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also rolls out on 25th May. The new law will make sure that the users gain much more control over how much data they hand over to the tech giants like Google and Facebook, and the users will also get to know what that data is used for. GDPR will ask the Facebook users whether they are happy to share their political views, racial or ethnic origin, biometric data, health, or sexual orientation.
Fox Rothchild’s lawyer Mark McCreary has mentioned that it is going to be a “disruptive” effect on the entire Facebook experience. So the Messenger pop-up appears to be Facebook’s idea of explicit consent. Facebook is preparing its hardest to be ready for the GDPR and the team includes senior executive across product, design, user experience, policy, legal and Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
But the company has not clarified its privacy policy yet. The companies which do not obey the new regulations will have to pay a fine upto 4% of annual turnover. But it is not yet clear that how Facebook will let its users see and control data that they do not even know that they are giving up. Paul Olivier-Dehaye has recently described to MPs that he is trying his best to get Facebook to hand over all the data that the firm has collected through Custom Audiences and Pixel.
