eHarmony Blog.com

After several months of investigation, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released last Thursday its report of findings into the privacy practices of Facebook.

“It’s clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates,” says Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.

“Our law says that if you’re operating this service in Canada, you’re subject to Canadian laws. So I think our jurisdiction is fairly clear,” Stoddart said.

The investigation also found that Facebook has a policy of indefinitely keeping the personal information of people who have deactivated their accounts – a violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s private-sector privacy law. The law is clear that organizations must retain personal information for a specified amount of time and only for as long as is necessary to meet appropriate purposes.

Meanwhile, eHarmony Canada’s Privacy Policy states the following:

We retain your PII for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose(s) for which it was collected and to comply with applicable laws, and your consent to such purpose(s) remains valid after termination of your relationship with us.

It is easily demonstrated that when members “close” their accounts in eHarmony, the totality of their personal information, e.g.,

1. gender
2. birthday
3. postal code
4. ethnicity
5. religious beliefs
6. marital status
7. having children or not
8. address
9. income
10. hobbies and interests
11. photos
12. credit card number
13. profile responses
14. communications with matches
15. behavior within the site
16. … and a lot more!

is merely deactivated and eHarmony retains this information indefinitely, since several of the purposes they stated are as perpetual as the company. eHarmony offers no automated means or assurance to delete this information from their servers.

And here’s the clincher:

Registrants who were rejected the questionnaire don’t even have access to the screen to “close” their account. Think about the personally identifiable information (e.g., names, zip codes, birthdays, marital status, etc.) of millions of people that eHarmony is retaining forever.