FTC Chief: Consumers Should Control Their Data on Social Sites

"We think generally people ought to have control over their data," says David Vladeck, head of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "If you wanted to leave a social-networking site at some point, you ought to be able to." That would mean the ability of a social network user to port his or her own data to another site. But Vladeck does not think that is required by law.

In fact, under U.S. law, it is a hard thing to determine who actually owns social network data. The FTC is one of the agencies that could ultimately be called upon to settle issues of data portability between social networking sites, an important issue for Facebook, Google and all other social networks as well.

Consumers Should Control Their Data on Social Sites