Facebook close to privacy settlement with US authorities

Nov 11, 2011, 11:32 GMT

San Francisco - Facebook has reached agreement with the US government on a new set of rules that will prevent the social networking site from changing users' privacy settings without first gaining their consent, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Under the terms of the deal between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook will agree to submit to privacy audits for the next 20 years in return for ending an investigation that began in 2009 in response to complaints about the company's privacy terms.

The investigation was launched after Facebook unilaterally changed users' privacy settings so that information such as name, city, photo, gender and friends were automatically made public unless a user opted out.

Facebook currently has more than 800 million members and thousands of companies that offer applications and services mine its data for personal information that could valuable to advertisers, marketers and others.

Few details were available about the terms of the Facebook settlement which was expected to be announced either Friday or Monday.

But the general terms of the deal appear similar to a settlement between the US government and Google to end an investigation over privacy violations of the web search giant's now defunct Buzz social networking service.