As soon as Facebook completed the changes on its terms of service, the blog Consumerist cited those changes, claiming that the company can use any of the content uploaded by its users. The post received more than 300,000 views and many concerned users begun sending e-mails demanding an explanation about the owner of each user’s data. The company’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg released a statement on Facebook’s official blog page, looking to address all the questions and assure everyone that all of their content is safe.
"Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they've asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn't help people share that information," said Mr. Zuckerberg.
The social network’s format deletes the information of any user who decides to erase the account – a fact that was not entirely understandable before the text change, which now explains that the profile information will fully disappear with it being stored anywhere else. Still, all the data sent to others, such as comments and invitations, will continue to be shown. This is why the terms has to be rewritten, as the old version made it sound like users could erase everything related to their accounts and also created several other confusions. Zuckerberg also added that there will be other changes made to the text, as they are always looking to improve the service, clarify their position and make the terms simpler.
According to the statement, users can count on their selected privacy options, as the company will not provide access to the information to anyone except the people chosen by the user (his or hers friends list). Looking at Facebook's terms of service, the company makes it clear that it does not have ownership over any of the user’s content, but it does have "an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (to) ... use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works, and distribute" the material as long as those actions do not violate the privacy preferences selected by the user.
Some users see no significant difference between the terms of use, and do not feel that they will be affected in any way. Still, there are others who feel that their information is not safe on the popular social network. Considering the fact that Facebook has more than 175 million users, these privacy concerns are normal.
An incident on privacy concerns took place back in 2007 when an advertising program called Beacon violated the users’ privacy by accessing the information of their online purchases and shared the details with their friends. At the time, Facebook issued an apology and provided the option to turn the program off – which should have been available from the beginning.
