Attorney General Lisa Madigan and 36 other attorneys general sent a letter demanding answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the company’s business practices and privacy protections. The letter from Madigan and the other attorneys general stems from reports that indicate the data of at least 50 million Facebook profiles may have been misused by third-party software developers. Facebook’s policies allowed developers to access the personal data of “friends” of people who used certain applications – without the knowledge or consent of these users. The letter to Zuckerberg raises a series of questions about the social networking site’s policies and practices, including:

• How did Facebook monitor what these developers did with all the data that they collected?
• What type of controls did Facebook have over the data given to developers?
• Did Facebook have protective safeguards in place, including audits, to ensure developers were not misusing users’ data?

Joining Madigan in sending the letter were the attorneys general of Alabama, American Samoa, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.