EU Lays Out Web Privacy Rules
European regulators have laid out operating guidelines for Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking Web sites to ensure they comply with the region's privacy laws, in a move to address concerns about the handling of users' personal information. The privacy issue is key for social-networking companies, many of which are based outside of the European Union but have millions of users within it. Regulators here say social-network users are protected by the 27-nation EU's strict privacy laws, which require Web sites to warn users of privacy risks and limit the sites' ability to target advertising based on members' race, religion or other sensitive categories. A panel of European privacy regulators that advises the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, issued an opinion, which was released Tuesday, that describes how EU privacy laws apply to social-networking sites. The opinion stated that the sites should place default security settings at a high level and allow users to limit data disclosed to third parties. The recommendations also seek to limit the use of sensitive information, such as race, religion or political opinion in behavioral advertising, which targets users based on aspects of their online activity.