Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On May 8, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement agreement with the social networking service Myspace LLC (“Myspace”). The FTC alleged that Myspace’s practice of sharing users’ personal information with unaffiliated third-party advertisers conflicted with representations the company made in its privacy policy, and could allow those advertisers to obtain users’ names, publicly available information and information about their online browsing habits.

As reported in Hunton & Williams' Employment & Labor Perspectives blog:

A recent New York state trial court decision, Romano v. Steelcase Inc., et al., is representative of a recent trend of parties seeking, and courts permitting, discovery of information on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.  Rejecting the plaintiff’s privacy concerns, the Romano court held that such information is discoverable because the plaintiff’s damages are at issue.  The court ordered the release of the plaintiff’s postings, pictures and other information on the social networking sites.

Reporting from Israel, legal consultant Dr. Omer Tene writes:

On July 28, 2010, the Israeli Supervisor of Banks, Rony Hizkiyahu, issued a letter to the CEOs of all local banks expressing concern over the banks' and their employees' use of online social networks, including both proprietary Web 2.0 tools and networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and YouTube, all of which are explicitly referred to in the letter.  The Supervisor of Banks, Israel’s banking regulator, requires banks to take steps to ensure data protection and information security, including ...

On May 26, 2010, the court in Crispin v. Christian Audigier, Inc. quashed portions of subpoenas seeking the disclosure of private messages sent through Facebook and MySpace.  The court left open the question of whether Crispin’s wall postings and comments should be disclosed pending a more thorough review of his online privacy settings.