Facebook Backtracks After Online Privacy Protest

Facebook is under unprecedented scrutiny for its policies on retention of personal data after users criticized the site for breaching privacy. After a wave of protests, the world's largest social networking site yesterday announced that it was reversing its recent decision to keep copies of users' messages online, even after they had left the network.

"Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago," the site told users. "Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised."

Until recently, Facebook - the world's most popular social networking site with more than 175 million users - deleted all online traces of a user if they chose to deactivate their account. However, two weeks ago the controversial new policy was introduced, which retained a copy of all messages, actions and updates online, even after people quit the site.

The change led to outrage among Facebook users and privacy campaigners, who began lobbying for the site to revert to its old terms of service. Hours after defending the policy this week, Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced yesterday that the site would be reverting to its previous terms.

Lawyers remain concerned, however, about privacy issues affecting users of social networking sites such as Facebook.

"There is a wider issue regarding the complexity of the terms, the fact that very few people read them, and [that] they probably don't understand Facebook has an indefinite right to keep material that gets posted," Frances Anderson, a commercial partner specializing in media and technology, said.

"Even after this change, Facebook still say they are retaining archive material - there is a lack of clarity about what the policy actually is. There is also the problem that if you want to deactivate your account and remove everything, you would have to go in and delete all your data yourself," Anderson added. "It may be that this is too onerous on individual users."

The decision to revert to the old legal terms of use is just the latest negative publicity for Facebook. In 2006 the site was forced to amend plans to provide a news feed updating the activities of shared friends, following concerns that it disproportionately invaded privacy. The news feed, now considered the central selling point of the site, was reintroduced with greater controls.

Last week it was revealed that the site had paid up to $65m (£46m) to settle a court case claiming that Zuckerberg had stolen the idea for Facebook from friends at Harvard University.

Information from previous court documents also showed that the company valued itself at $3.7bn - substantially lower than the $15bn estimated when Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake for $240m in 2007.