By Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer
As part of Data Privacy Day, we’re introducing a new education campaign to help you understand how data is used on Facebook and how you can manage your own data. We’re also announcing plans to make your core privacy settings easier to find, and sharing our privacy principles for the first time. These principles guide our work at Facebook.
Helping You Take Control of Your Data on Facebook
You have many ways to control your data on Facebook. This includes tools to make sure you share only what you want with the people you want to see it. But privacy controls are only powerful if you know how to find and use them. Starting today we’re introducing educational videos in News Feed that help you get information on important privacy topics like how to control what information Facebook uses to show you ads, how to review and delete old posts, and even what it means to delete your account.
We’re also inviting people to take our Privacy Checkup and sharing privacy tips in education campaigns off Facebook, including ads on other websites. We’ll refresh our education campaigns throughout the year to give you tips on different topics.
Making Privacy Settings Easier to Find
We know how important it is for you to have clear, simple tools for managing your privacy. This year, we’ll introduce a new privacy center that features core privacy settings in a single place. We’re designing this based on feedback from people, policymakers and privacy experts around the world.
Facebook’s Privacy Principles
Our efforts to build data protection into our products and give you more information and control reflect core principles we’ve had on privacy. Today we’re sharing these principles for the first time here, and we’ve included them below.
We’re also developing resources that help other organizations build privacy into their services. For example, throughout 2018 we’re hosting workshops on data protection for small and medium businesses, beginning in Europe with a focus on the new General Data Protection Regulation. We hosted our first workshop in Brussels last week and published a guide for frequently asked questions. Around the world we’ll continue to host Design Jams that bring designers, developers, privacy experts and regulators together to create new ways of educating people on privacy and giving them control of their information.
We’ll keep improving our privacy tools and look forward to hearing what you think.
Facebook’s Privacy Principles
Facebook was built to bring people closer together. We help you connect with friends and family, discover local events and find groups to join. We recognize that people use Facebook to connect, but not everyone wants to share everything with everyone – including with us. It’s important that you have choices when it comes to how your data is used. These are the principles that guide how we approach privacy at Facebook.
We give you control of your privacy
You should be able to make the privacy choices that are right for you. We want to make sure you know where your privacy controls are and how to adjust them. For example, our audience selector tool lets you decide who you share with for every post. We develop controls based on feedback from around the world.
We help people understand how their data is used
While our Data Policy describes our practices in detail, we go beyond this to give you even more information. For example, we include education and tools in people’s day-to-day use of Facebook – like ad controls in the top right corner of every ad.
We design privacy into our products from the outset
We design privacy into Facebook products with guidance from experts in areas like data protection and privacy law, security, interface design, engineering, product management, and public policy. Our privacy team works to build these diverse perspectives into every stage of product development.
We work hard to keep your information secure
We work around the clock to help protect people’s accounts, and we build security into every Facebook product. Our security systems run millions of times per second to help catch threats automatically and remove them before they ever reach you. You can also use our security tools like two-factor authentication to help keep your account even more secure.
You own and can delete your information
You own the information you share on Facebook. This means you decide what you share and who you share it with on Facebook, and you can change your mind. That’s why we give you tools for deleting anything you’ve posted. We remove it from your timeline and from our servers. You can also delete your account whenever you want.
Improvement is constant
We’re constantly working to develop new controls and design them in ways that explain things to people clearly. We invest in research and work with experts beyond Facebook including designers, developers, privacy professionals and regulators.
We are accountable
In addition to comprehensive privacy reviews, we put products through rigorous data security testing. We also meet with regulators, legislators and privacy experts around the world to get input on our data practices and policies.