Facebook has seen its share of criticism over its approach to privacy and way it treats its users’ data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has put together a chronology of what it calls “Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy.” Sitejabber believes all websites and businesses have a powerful obligation to respect and protect their customers’ privacy. To this end, today, a group of privacy advocates including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the EFF,  and the American Civil Liberties Union posted an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting six changes to improve user privacy.

The letter requests:

1) Fix the “app gap” by empowering users to decide exactly which applications can access their personal information.

2) Make “instant personalization” opt-in by default.

3) Do not retain data about specific visitors to third party sites that incorporate “social plugins” or the “like” button unless the site visitor chooses to interact with those tools.

4) Provide users with control over every piece of information they can share via Facebook, including their name, gender, profile picture, and networks.

5) Protect Facebook users from other threats by using an HTTPS connection for all interactions by default.

6) Provide users with simple tools for exporting their uploaded content and the details of their social network so that users who are no longer comfortable with Facebook’s policies and want to leave for another social network service do not have to choose between safeguarding their privacy and staying connected to their friends.

Read the full text of the letter.

Sitejabber supports the content of this letter and would like to urge all Facebook members to demand these changes as well.