Los Angeles — Facebook head of communications Elliot Schrage posted a company blog entry on Thursday requesting users to examine the proposed revision to its privacy policy, and asked for feedback from the social network’s more than 300 million users until November 5, 2009, these changes that were made, in part, are to appease Canadian privacy officials.
“This is the renewed step in our ongoing effort to run Facebook in an open and transparent way,” Schrage said. “After the comment period is over, we will review your feedback and update you on our next steps.”
The revamped policy describes the social networking site’s privacy rules in a “clearer and more comprehensive” manner, Facebook said in a blog post. As part of its promise back in April to operate in a more democratic manner, Facebook will accept comments on the proposal until noon Pacific time on November 5.
Some of the modifications to Facebook’s privacy policy are the result of pressure from Canada, whose privacy czar conducted an investigation into its handling of personal information.
“In this revision,” Schrage said, “we are fulfilling our commitment to the privacy commissioner of Canada to update our privacy policy to better describe a number of practices”.
“Specifically, we have included sections that further explain the privacy setting you can choose to make your content viewable by everyone, the difference between deactivating and deleting your account,” and the process of memorializing an account once we have received a report that the account holder is deceased,” Schrage wrote.
Facebook said it will save profile information such as friend lists and photos from a deactivated account in case a member decides to reactivate it later but the material will not be viewable by other users.
It said a deleted account is “permanently deleted.”
Facebook suggested that information of a deleted account may still be viewable on the pages of other users if it was shared or copied and stored by them.
“However, your name will no longer be associated with that information on Facebook,” it said, and will be attributed to an “anonymous Facebook user.”
Facebook also stressed that personal data is not provided to advertisers. “The information we provide to advertisers is ‘anonymized,’ meaning that it cannot be traced back to you as an individual in any way,” Schrage said.
Facebook has divided its privacy policy into eight sections, including sections that covered the information the company receives and how it is used and shared; how customers can view that information, change, or remove it, and how Facebook protects information.
Facebook did not provide a side-by-side comparison of the changes to its privacy policy because the update is “so different from the current policy.”