Over the last few weeks, I have been talking about whether financial services companies should be on Facebook and if they are should they be engaging their customers on there?

The reason I ask is that my understanding is that banks are not allowed to disclose any information about their customers – who they are, if they are a customer, what services they use or any personal or financial information. So, with this being the case, if they have a Facebook page and as a customer I engage with them and am identified in some way or the victim of financial fraud or some other crime – is the bank responsible?

The argument may be that as I have a Facebook account and have voluntarily engaged with my bank on Facebook, and then I am making my customer status public. My concern is that under Facebook terms and conditions they own the data and can do with it what they choose – they state they do not identify individuals, but we know they have “made errors” and individual’s details have been passed to advertisers – more than once – so it is a problem.

So, if my bank has a Facebook page, can I assume they have done the due diligence on the Terms and Conditions of what Facebook can do with my data and is it protected on the Fan/Like Page the way it would be with all other interactions with my bank?

…but would love to hear from people in the financial services industry as to how they are going to protect their customers data on social networks like Facebook and what guidelines they are giving their teams working on social networks about protecting customer data.