Facebook soon be privacy-friendly?

Source said, Facebook and the FTC are about to sign an agreement which will subject Facebook to privacy audits for the next 20 years. The agreement will apparently require Facebook to obtain prior express consent before making public any information to which the user had granted limited access only. The agreement is a direct response to complaints over the changes Facebook made to its privacy policy in 2009, when previously private information became accessible to the public and users had to take active steps in order to return to their accustomed privacy settings. if a user changes all the settings on the privacy section of the site, certain pieces of information will still be shared across the site unless a user takes further action. For example, under the Account Settings option, in the Facebook Ads tab, two options are automatically turned on to share some information with advertising networks and friends. Anyone who wants to keep this information private must uncheck the boxes in that tab.And still, some information will no longer remain private because Facebook has also added a feature, called community pages, which automatically links personal data, like hometown or university, to topic pages for that town or university. The only way to disappear from those topic pages is to delete personal data from Facebook.

Considering what made Facebook’s business model so successful, it is hardly surprising that Facebook would be reluctant in addressing European privacy concerns. It will likely always be a struggle to reconcile the business model built on a global platform with 800 million users publicly sharing information with the right to the protection of personal data granted by Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Two recent press releases by a German data protection agency highlight these conflicts.