Officials from the Data Protection Commissioner’s office will call to Facebook’s Dublin headquarters to discuss the social network’s privacy policies.
The visit, this week, follows a major audit of the Facebook’s privacy policies and use of customer data, which was instigated in December after 22 complaints lodged by Austrian lobby group ‘Europe Versus Facebook’.
In the audit report, the commissioner said that indefinite retention of users’ ‘ad click’ data by Facebook was “completely unacceptable”. Facebook has agreed that this data will now be deleted within two years. The report also recommended changes to privacy policy surrounding third-party applications used by Facebook customers and criticised its use of facial recognition technology.
Facebook responded by allowing users to opt out of the facial recognition feature and also agreed to make moves towards the deletion of information such as friend requests, “pokes” and photo “tags”.
As Facebook’s European headquarters are based in Dublin, the Commission has jurisdiction over all of the social network’s non-US or Canadian users – some 700 million people. Deputy data protection commissioner Gary Davis, who headed the audit last year, will spend the rest of this week on the full re-audit at Facebook’s European HQ, cited as the largest project ever taken on by his office.
“We look forward to the meeting and will continue to work cooperatively with our regulator in Ireland,” said a Facebook spokesperson in an official statement.
