Irish Regulators Order Facebook to Boost Privacy Protections

In response to an audit by Irish data protection officials, Facebook has agreed to be more transparent about its facial-recognition feature and how its European users' data is used, the social network announced.

"There should be room for improvement in how Facebook Ireland handles the personal information of users," deputy Irish data commissioner Gary Davis said. In particular, European Facebook users will receive more alerts about how the face-based, photo-tagging feature works so they can decide whether or not to use the program. Facebook said it will also change "a number of policies" regarding data retention, like how data is logged when people access Web sites with Facebook plug-ins "to minimize the amount of information collected about people who are not logged in to Facebook." Finally, Facebook will also work with Irish officials to "improve the information that people using Facebook are given about how to control their information both on Facebook and when using applications," Facebook said. The Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) will follow up with Facebook in July 2012 to make sure these changes have been put in place.