Facebook Inc., the world’s biggest social networking site, will overhaul its service in Europe over the next six months as a result of an investigation into how the social network handles personal data.
Facebook “has agreed to a wide range of best practice improvements” to its service that will get a formal review in July, the Irish data-protection agency said today, after concluding a three-month audit. Facebook’s Ireland operation is responsible for all the Palo Alto, California-based company’s users outside the U.S. and Canada, the agency said.
“This was a challenging engagement both for my office and for Facebook Ireland,” Billy Hawkes, Ireland’s data-protection commissioner, said in an e-mail. The report said there has to be “increased transparency and controls for the use of personal data for advertising purposes” and “the deletion of data held from user interactions with the site much sooner.”
via Facebook to Change European Service After Data-Privacy Probe – Businessweek.
