Facebook Vows to Improve Transparency in Europe

Posted 12/22/2011 at 7:34am | by Paul Lilly

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Facebook's ongoing privacy policy reform will undergo even more changes in the next six month as the social network attempts to improve transparency and do a better job with how it collects and handles private data in Europe. The vow to change comes at the conclusion of a review by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), which oversees Facebook's legal compliance to users outside the U.S. and Canada (Facebook's international headquarters is in Ireland).

"Last month, Facebook announced an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, our regulatory oversight agency in the United States, to formalise our commitment to provide you with control over your privacy and sharing -- and provide new protections to ensure that your information is only shared in the way you intend," Facebook stated in a blog post."

"Audit reports are not frequently made public, but in this case, the DPC and Facebook agreed at the outset that -- in the interests of transparency -- the contents of the audit should be made public, in full, immediately upon completion. We believe this is the best way for users and policymakers around the world to understand how thoroughly the DPC performed its examination and how closely we will be working together in the future," Facebook added.

Much of the blog post covers parts of the report that "highlighted a number of Facebook's strengths or best practices," but also included several problem areas, or "opportunities to strengthen" its existing practices. One of the big ones is data retention. Facebook has agreed to immediately change a number of polices related to retaining data indefinitely and how information about its users is collected when they access websites with social plugins.

Facebook also promised to offer additional notifications to European users about its photo Tag Suggest feature, and vowed to be more upfront about how users can control their information, both on Facebook and when using applications.