Twitter To Establish Information Security Program

An anonymous reader writes "Twitter has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information, marking the 30th case the FTC has brought targeting faulty data security, and the agency's first such case against a social networking service. Under the terms of the settlement, Twitter will be barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information, including the measures it takes to prevent authorized access to information and honor the privacy choices made by consumers."

Re:FACEBOOK

[Locke2005]

Hiding the delete option for FB accounts and implementing it in such a fucking retarded way, forcing the account holders to search out and delete every comment, photo, tag, and other info they put in instead of just having a delete button? Utter bullshit. You've obviously never tried to terminate an AOL account. Most ex-AOLers decided it was easier to just cancel their credit card.

Re:WTF?

[adiemus]

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/24/ftc-twitter-privacy-settlement/ [techcrunch.com]

Legal Stuffs

[bv728]

IANALBIFWI, "Twitter will be barred for 20 years ..." does NOT mean that twenty years from now they have the right to mislead. It means that if the Government finds out they're misleading within the next 20 years it does not need to have a trial to take action - they can just slam them as violating the existing ruling. This is, functionally, a suspended sentence (thus third party review of their new security measures).

Re:Kinda like consecutive life sentences...

[Locke2005]

I'd think you were being paranoid, but the Supreme Court today gutted the "honest services" law: "All nine justices agreed that public officials and corporate executives cannot be convicted of defrauding the public unless they enriched themselves by taking a bribe or a kickback. Secret deals or conflicts of interest are not a crime unless they involve a direct payoff." So, as long as they are committing fraud to enrich the company, which then is more profitable and pays them more money, and not taking the money directly themselves, it's ok?!? WTF?!? Sounds like all that matters is the interests of the shareholders, and the customers are irrelevant.

Re:Twitter will be barred for 20 years from mislea

[fyrewulff]

It's legal language. They aren't saying they were permitted before or permitted afterwards. They're saying that Twitter is basically on probation for the next 20 years, and now if they do it again the FTC can fine them since they've now warned them.

It'd be like say (ignore all other laws for a moment), a store advertising 20$ iPhones and they're 400$ when you get in the store. They would be told that they can't mislead customers for another 20 years, or else face heavy fines.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

just to add a snippet from that (for those too lazy to click):

It may sound silly to bar Twitter from “misleading consumers” for 20 years, but that is essentially the life of the order and gives the FTC the ability to fine Twitter for future security breaches to the tune of $16,000 per incident. Without this order and the settlement, the FTC does not have what is known as civil penalty authority.