Chairmen Rockefeller, Bono Mack seek explanations from Facebook

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) will hold a hearing to look into reports that Facebook tracks its users on the Web after they log out. "No company should track customers without their knowledge or consent, especially a company with 800 million users and a trove of unique personal data on its users," Chairman Rockefeller said. "If Facebook or any other company is falsely leading people to believe that they can log out of the site and not be tracked, that is alarming."

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company uses cookies to personalize content and keep accounts secure. "When someone logs off of Facebook, we delete certain cookies and reduce the amount of information we receive when the person visits websites that contain social plug-ins such as the Like button," he said. "We have made these practices clear in our Privacy Policy and Help Center since the launch of social plug-ins. We appreciate Sen. Rockefeller's interest in protecting consumer privacy and look forward to discussing this with him." He also said that Facebook does not sell users' information to third parties and deletes or anonymizes data within 90 days.

Chairman Rockefeller and House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Chairman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) want Facebook to come before Congress to explain why Facebook members got swarmed by pornographic and violent images this week. Chairman Bono Mack directed her staff to bring in Facebook officials next week for a briefing to learn more about the wave of pornographic and violent images that spread through Facebook's automated content-sharing systems. Among the questions Bono Mack wants answered: How many people were impacted? What actually happened? How did it happen? Could the vulnerability be used to gather users' personal information? What is Facebook doing to prevent future intrusions?