By Steve Satterfield, Privacy & Public Policy Director

This year, we’ve made our privacy settings easier to find and improved your ability to manage your data, including through Download Your Information, which is a way to access a secure copy of the data you’ve shared with Facebook. But using your data from one service when you sign up for another still isn’t as easy it should be. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re participating in the Data Transfer Project, a collaboration of organizations, including Google, Microsoft and Twitter, committed to building a common way for people to transfer data into and out of online services.

Moving your data between any two services can be complicated because every service is built differently and uses different types of data that may require unique privacy controls and settings. For example, you might use an app where you share photos publicly, a social networking app where you share updates with friends, and a fitness app for tracking your workouts. People increasingly want to be able to move their data among different kinds of services like these, but they expect that the companies that help them do that will also protect their data.

These are the kinds of issues the Data Transfer Project will tackle. The Project is in its early stages, and we hope more organizations and experts will get involved. More information is available in the project’s white paper and at https://datatransferproject.dev/.