User privacy is a very serious business, and many social networks have been criticised when it comes to how they handle user data.
In 2009 a study titled The Privacy Jungle was published by Cambridge University on data protection in Social Networks, which scrutinised a lot of industry-wide practices, and scored many companies quite low. One of those, we are sad to say, was Badoo.
But two years is a long time when it comes to technology, and the landscape that the researchers looked at back then has changed a lot. Badoo has worked very hard to increase transparency about how we deal with user data, and implemented a brand new privacy policy in plain, easy-to-read English. With this in mind, we invited one of the lead researchers in the Cambridge study, Sören Preibusch, to meet the Badoo team and talk about what had improved, as well as future steps we can take to make our users’ experience even better, safer and more transparent.
Sören explained that there were actually some aspects of the original study in which we did very well; “In 2009, Badoo was one of the very few social networks to maintain a machine-readable (P3P) policy. In 2012, the site continues to provide a P3P policy, whilst other well-known Web companies are trying to bypass this standard mechanism to communicate cookie and data collection practices.”
Mr Preibusch is a German researcher based at the University of Cambridge who has been involved with privacy research for over six years, focusing on technical and economic aspects of privacy negotiations, online social networking, and the mobile Web. He has contributed to privacy and social networking themes within the World Wide Web Consortium, and his publications give an account of the supply and demand for data protection on the social Web and in electronic business.
“When meeting with Badoo, we discussed ways to further help site members to control their personal information, such as instructional videos,” said Sören. “Badoo have overhauled their privacy policy to make it easier to read. A section on users’ rights has been added, where it is explained how users can delete their profiles and have their data removed.”
We also took the opportunity to talk to him about two new privacy features we’re launching to give users greater control over their information. These features– available on web as well as mobile — allow Badoo users to hide their online status if they wish, as well as to turn off at any time the application feature which shows their location to other users.
Making sure our users feel safe and comfortable using our site is a top priority Badoo, and clearly, a key component of realizing that goal is ensuring we have the right controls in place, and that we act responsibly and transparently. We’ll continue to work with privacy researchers like Mr Preibusch, as well as listen to our users’ feedback, to ensure we’re doing a good job in these areas.
For more information about how we treat your personal data, please go to www.badoo.com/privacy