In the European Union, social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, will need to do more to protect their users’ privacy, as a panel of European regulators decided when they laid out operating guidelines for social networks.

The new online privacy laws, although strict and fairly unclear to some, would ensure relative security for social networking in the European Union.

These laws are not entirely new, in fact, they come from the European Union Directive on Data Protection of 1995, says along with other regulations, that the collection and sharing of personal information on users without their permission is prohibited. However, some stipulations apply which is according to some data-privacy lawyers. Basically, the regulations are not exactly clear to everyone and it may take such a lawyer to decipher it for some people.

Even so, social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, will find themselves on the wrong path if they do not to follow these tough procedures. This must be done if they want to avoid conflicting with EU regulators.

Social networks must, by default, set their security settings to high according to these guidelines. They also must allow their users to limit disclosed data to outside parties while limiting the user of sensitive information in behavioural promotions.

In lieu of Facebook’s recent scandal where they attempted to claim ownership of all content uploaded by their users, social networks will be required to delete accounts that have been inactive for a long duration and delete all personal information instead of taking claim to it.

There a certainty that the European Union will make it difficult for social networks such as Facebook and MySpace when it comes to implementing new online privacy and security guidelines. You have to ask the question: Do these social networks currently have adequate policies in place to protect their users?