Norway goes after Facebook and Zynga

Norwegian here. This is a very ugly can of worms for my countrymen. Datatilsynet is one of the world's strictest authorities when it comes to guarding the privacy of normal citizens. Privacy and confidentiality of personal information is taken very, very seriously in Norway. Personally, I believe that we are very lucky to have an official body that actually cares about our privacy. These guys have time and time again stood up against bad trends in this area - most recently speaking up against the EU data retention directive that would require ISPs to keep records about all electronic communications sent between citizens of the EU (and Norway, which is strictly speaking not in the EU).

The problem is that Facebook is almost certainly in violation of lots of Norwegian privacy regulations. But banning Facebook outright is not an option. I think what we will see in the end are official warnings from the Norwegian authorities about the privacy risks Facebook represent, and possibly some clarification about what whomever gets hold of this information can do with it. It would not surpsise me to see a lawsuit soon in which the right of employers to discriminate on the basis of Facebook-acquired information is challenged and struck down.

Getting reported to an authority isn't the same thing as actually getting investigated by the authority. I don't know about Norway's data protection folks, but a lot of European data protection authorities are under-resourced for the fairly broad mandate they have.

Here's another link with some more info(in English) and the complaint as a pdf(in Norwegian)

http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2010/Facebook_and_Zynga...