Facebook promises to clean up its privacy act

SOCIAL NETWORKING OUTFIT Facebook has told privacy groups that it will clean up its act.

In a response linked from its company blog, Facebook said that it will roll out a new "data permission model" for developers this summer that will fix problems relating to third-party applications being able to access users' information.

It has already added functionality to allow users to opt-out of this information sharing.

However Facebook said that the recently launched instant personalisation programme had been "widely misunderstood" and that it allowed Facebook partners to only access information that was already public on users' profiles.

It has "made it easier for people to turn off the instant personalisation pilot programme which prevent those, and any future applications in the programme, from accessing their information," Facebook claimed.

The social notworking network also defended its 'Like' button for storing information on users. It said that the data is kept for only 90 days, is not sold on for advertisement targeting.

Facebook also said that while it allows APIs that enable users to share their information with other sites, it would not allow this in a way that took data created by other users.

Meanwhile the firm said it had improved the privacy of all information shared by users. "Just like with other fields of data, users can decide to share this content with friends, friends of friends or everyone. It has been our experience that people have a more meaningful experience when they share some information about themselves," Facebook said.

The outfit is also testing Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) access to the website in order to increase the level of security it provides for users.

The response was to an open letter that was sent by privacy advocates, which we reported here.