Facebook under fire for privacy policy

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WIVB) - The Facebook empire is coming under more fire. Does the social networking giant stomp on privacy?

Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world. It's 400 million users worldwide make it the second most popular website after Google. But recently Facebook's changes to its privacy settings could make users profile information privy to third party websites, unsolicited ads, and even spam.

Senator Charles Schumer said, "Privacy is an important concern. Dissemination of information is an important concern and I think we have to find the balance. It will take a little while because technology is developing so quickly."

Senator Schumer is calling upon the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerbeg, and the Federal Trade Commission to tighten the reigns on privacy and create policies for how social networking sites can use and share peoples' information.

"The default position should be that the information is not shared, not that the information is shared. We believe Facebook should reverse its policy so that users have to opt in to share data rather than opt out," said Sen. Schumer.

Doing this will insure that the default setting for users personal profile is kept private.

Sen. Schumer said, "I would read what you have to do to opt out, but we really only have so much time. It's just really hard to opt out."

And that is why Senator Schumer along with Senators Bennet and Franken are committed to get this changed.