MONTREAL - What happens on Facebook is expected to impact other social networking sites when it comes to respecting their users' privacy.
Canada's privacy commissioner is set to announce Thursday how the globally popular Facebook will comply with privacy concerns.
Other social networking sites should look at the Facebook case to see what needs to be done to improve their own privacy practices, said Tamir Israel of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
"This sets a standard," Israel said Wednesday.
"Facebook was pretty high profile, so I think it would be enough to get their attention and get them to comply," he said from Ottawa.
The criticism of Facebook's privacy practices made headlines around the world last month.
Federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has said Facebook breaches Canada's privacy law by keeping user's personal information indefinitely -- even after some members close their accounts.
She also raised concerns about the sharing of users' information with the almost one million third-party software developers in scores of countries who create applications like games, quizzes and horoscopes for Facebook.
Stoddart's office has been meeting with Facebook to see if changes meet her demands.
Facebook said Wednesday it will respond after the privacy commissioner's news conference on Thursday in Ottawa.
Any changes that Facebook makes are expected to be implemented beyond Canada, said Israel, staff lawyer with the clinic at the University of Ottawa's law faculty.
"I think they are going to be Facebook wide. That's what we've seen in the past," he said.
Israel said his clinic will be "keeping an eye" on other social networking sites.
"If social networking sites aren't improving their practices to meet these standards I think we will be getting involved."
That means sites like MySpace, networking tool Linkedin, Classmates.com and microblogging site Twitter could be under the clinic's eye or decide to revisit their own practices.
