Besides the king of Social media world, Facebook is on its race to hit the crypto market as well but this becomes a serious concern for US Senator. The U.S. Senate Banking Committee released an open letter, demanding Facebook to detail about its crypto-oriented Libra project.
Facebook’s earlier privacy breach comes as the first concern for the Banking Committee which they have stated in a letter sent to Facebook on May 09, 2019. According to the letter, addressing Facebook’s founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Banking Committee has referred to the Wall Street Journal’s article which was first to report Crypto-currency based Lira payment system. It was revealed that Facebook by acquiring rights to the “Libra” trademark for its cryptocurrency project, is reportedly recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants.
Nevertheless to note that banking committee has raised the eyebrows on following questions and asked Zuckerberg to respond.
1. How would this new cryptocurrency-based payment system work, and what outreach has there been to financial regulators to ensure it meets all legal and regulatory requirements?
2. What privacy and consumer protections would users have under the new payment system?
3. What consumer financial information does Facebook have that it has received from a financial company?
4. To the extent, Facebook has received consumer financial information from a financial company, what does Facebook do with such information and how does Facebook safeguard the information?
5. Does Facebook share or sell any consumer information (or information derived from consumer information) with any unaffiliated third parties?
Besides these, two more questions that Committee asked was; whether Facebook holds information about individual’s credit standing/capacity and if it does, then, how does Facebook ensures such information isn’t used in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Given the above key concerns, Committee expects Zuckerberg to respond and let the committee know the status of Facebook Coin ahead of anything on ‘Libra Project’. Nevertheless, Facebook with over 2.38 billion monthly active users will likely influence a lot more people to enter into a crypto era – but – at the same time, the US Senate Committee wants to keep its close eye on privacy aspect that Facebook is expected to deal with.
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