Facebook simplifies privacy controls, following Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook is making it simpler for people to control how their data is used after a massive privacy scandal has shaken the company and caused its stock price to drop 15 percent.

In the coming months, privacy controls that are now in 20 different places on Facebook's app will be merged into a single page, and will include what the company says will be easier-to-comprehend features that explain how the company is using a person's data, the company announced Wednesday. Facebook will also create a page that makes it easier for people to download their data so that they can more clearly view what information the company collects about them.

The changes come during a crisis moment after revelations that the data consultancy Cambridge Analytica had wrongfully obtained the Facebook profiles on at least 30 million U.S. Facebook users. They also coincide with sweeping new privacy laws, which require more specific and simplified to disclosures to consumers, that are about to go into effect in Europe. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify in Congress next month.

"The last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and to help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data," Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, wrote in the blog post. "We've heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find, and that we must do more to keep people informed."

The changes Facebook announced Wednesday, which the company says have been in the works for several months, are primarily redesigns that streamline already-existing features. The social network already gives consumers the ability to download their data and control many privacy settings, albeit in a confusing way.

But research has shown that changes in design, sometimes called privacy nudges, can impact people's behaviour, said Lorrie Cranor, director of the Cylab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's former chief technologist.

A 2010 study by Cranor and other Carnegie Mellon researchers found that people tend to comprehend simpler privacy policies better than long, complicated ones. The study, which included 764 participants and followed a format for privacy policies modelled after a nutrition label, also found that people got through simpler policies more quickly and were less frustrated by the experience.