Facebook consents to alterations to improve transparency

Facebook Inc, the famous social networking company has accepted to make certain alterations so as to improve the transparency and to protect the personal data information of its users out of US in a better manner. This was decided after an audit conducted at the international headquarters of the company.

Facebook Inc is situated in Palo Alto in California and this is where the audit took place. The company has accepted to some changes like asking the European users if they would like to partake in the Facial Recognition, reducing the amount of data that is gathered about the those not in Facebook and in reworking on the policies of deleting and retaining the personal data. This was the response of the company for the report made by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

Facebook has international headquarters in many places and also in European countries like Ireland therefore, the company has to comply with the data privacy laws of Europe. The laws in Europe are very strict than that in US especially when it comes to the duration of retaining the data.

The company announced that they will implement or minimum consider the improvements that are recommended to them by the data protection commissioner and that it will take another six months to meet these commitments. The company has assured to submit the follow-up report in July 2012.

The data protection commissioner of Ireland has to audit the high tech companies that are operating the country in order to ensure their practices are in compliance with the European privacy laws. They will also recommend the companies to meet the standards if they fail to. The ultimate aim of the audit is help the companies to achieve the complete compliance with the privacy laws.

Facebook has been repeatedly coming under various complaints like selling the personal information to the advertisers with the Friend Finder application and also for retaining the data of the those users who have deleted their accounts. So far about 22 complaints were recorded on Facebook by a group of Austrain students.