Facebook is updating its terms and service guidelines to show how it makes money from its users ‘ personal data

Po

The governing changes announced Thursday are largely cosmetic. The updates do not change Facebook’s core policies.

Facebook has come under fire with regulators in Europe, and increasingly in the US, for the way it handles personal information collected on its site – and how transparent it is with users.

The company said it made the updates after working with the European consumer protection group and regulators around the world.

The European Commission took to it Facebook’s agreement to make the changes in April, saying the Commission had requested the changes “to clearly inform consumers about how the social network is funded.”

Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook’s new guidelines address this challenge: “Instead of paying for the use of Facebook and other products and services that we offer, through Facebook products covered by these terms, you agree that we may show you ads that businesses and organizations pay us to promote on and off of Facebook products.”

The terms and services curse that even if users remove content from the site, it can still exist on Facebook’s servers for 90 days. It is also clear that a breach of company policy could get posts removed from the site and explains that users still own the material they post online, although Facebook may use it.

But with nearly 10 pages in PDF form, Facebook still faces the most common problem with long deadlines and services – people rarely read them.

Facebook will release a blog post about the changes, which take effect July 31, but will not require users to agree again to the updated terms. It will also not promote updates on people’s Facebook feeds. The company said it decided not to force people to re-sign the agreement because the changes only clarify the existing policy and do not change it.

Facebook, along with other major Internet companies, have been increasingly careful in the past year about how well they protect people’s data and how they profit from it. The company is under investigation by the Federal trade Commission over its privacy practices.

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