BANGALORE: Ahead of its initial public offering (IPO), social networking giant Facebook seems to have woken up to the fact that its users possess strong opinions about how they want their data to be stored with it.Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan recently released a statement which explained a few additions to its privacy policy. However, the more important factor to consider the statement is-for the first time in its history, Facebook has decided to take its users into confidence while drafting privacy policies. “Please take a look and weigh in. We work on user privacy issues each and every day, it matters. We listen closely to your advice and together we can make Facebook the community we want,” said Egan in her statement. Additionally, Egan invited Facebook users for a live chat with her in which she promised to answer questions that users might have on the issue of privacy policies adopted by Facebook. According to online reports, Facebook has kept a window of 7 days for users to comment on its privacy policy changes. Any change which receives more than 7,000 comments will be made to face a poll and if a particular comment receives 30 per cent approval in the poll from ‘active’ users, it will be implemented. “It is not clear how they will judge who an active user is. However, in principle, this is a nice step by a company who has been very tight lipped about its privacy policies till now,” said Arvind T, a software professional. He added that he would definitely try and raise the question in the video chat scheduled for late Monday night IST. As another step, Facebook has also integrated all its policies into a single page where a user can gain access to all of Facebook’s terms and policies in a central location. “We are adding detailed explanations. We also provide more information about how we use data to operate Facebook, to advertise, and to promote safety and security for Facebook users. These examples and explanations are designed to help you understand what the Data Use Policy means in practice,” said Erin.
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