In early February, Palo Alto-based Facebook brought some changes to their terms of service, which even though did not immediately prompt any major reactions, managed to create quite the controversy  afterwards.

Facebook users became concerned when reading the altered terms, since they no longer informed what the social networking website was to do with the information posted after a user closed their account.

Moreover, the changes brought allowed Facebook 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 content posted on the website, according to the new deal.

The users’ concerns gave rise to several groups being created on Facebook in order to protest against the changes, while some people pledged to have their accounts removed from the social network.

In response, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg offered some explanations in a blog posting, in the attempt to put an end to the debates.

Zuckerberg underlined on his blog that users owned the information they chose to share on Facebook and also had the power to decide who gets to see those personal details.

Facebook, a network comprising 175 million users, stated that the changes had been aimed at making sure that in case a user deleted their account, all the messages sent to friends would remain on the website.

Furthermore, the Facebook founder said that the measure had been consistent with the methods e-mail services used, adding one of the reasons that had determined them to change the terms of service had been to render the aforementioned clear to users.