Richard Blumenthal. Photo by Keelin Daly/Stamford Advocate
Just because Richard Blumenthal is now a U.S. Senator does not mean he will stop going after corporations he thinks are doing the public wrong.
Blumenthal and three other Democratic senators (Al Franken-Minn., Charles E. Schumer-N.Y. and Sheldon Whitehouse-R.I.), sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, warning him to stop plans to “reveal sensitive personal information about its 147 million American users, making them easy targets for fraud, theft and abuse,” the foursome said in a release.
A new Facebook plan would allow application developers to request and obtain information including addresses and phone numbers.
“Anyone with ten minutes, $25 and a Facebook user’s phone and address and no other information can obtain a breathtaking amount of information about that Facebook user—and that Facebook user’s family, friends, neighbors, and landlord,” the senators wrote. “Combined with a targeted Google search, these two pieces of information can allow someone to obtain almost all of the information necessary to complete a loan or credit card application. It is hard to contemplate all of the different ways in which this information could be abused.”
The senators said they would like Zuckerberg to reconsider Facebook’s policy or at least take some steps to block those under 18 from revealing the information. They would also like Facebook to inform other users about the risks of the new policy and allow users to opt out.
The full text of the letter is here: http://franken.senate.gov/files/letter/110309_Mark_Zuckerberg_Privacy.pdf.
Last year, Sens. Franken, Schumer, Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) wrote a letter urging Facebook to fix its privacy policy to block users personal information from being accessed by third parties without the user’s consent.
The full text of that letter can be found here: http://franken.senate.gov/files/letter/100427_Facebook_Letter.pdf.
You think chucky really cares? schumer only does this to be in front of the camera, by the way if your ever in the same room with this person the most dangerous place is to be in between chucky and a camera. chucky goes around door to door asking what other people are up to then calls in the media and makes like he is doing it all. plus if people were really smart they would close their FB accounts and zuckenberg and all the privacy issues would go away. If these politicians really were concerned about privacy why are they not targeting the companies that are selling your information and advertising it on the web? ie: spoke.com, spokeo.com, intellus.com, and so on. These are the companies that need to be purged.