London, Nov 13 (ANI): Facebook will soon require its users' consent before making any changes to the social networking site that results in exposing their profiles and activities to a wider audience.
The social network earlier announced alterations to its members' settings without asking for consent.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the social networking giant is now changing its policy after an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission.
The report suggested the site has also agreed to privacy audits by an independent organisation over the next 20 years.
However, it said the FTC does not prescribe how consent should be obtained, the BBC reports.
"Facebook has historically been extremely resistant to transparency in its own operations, so we welcome measures that would force the company to obtain express consent of its users," said the London based advocacy group Privacy International.
"However, it seems likely that the FTC's demands will only present a temporary obstacle in the path of Facebook's ambitions to collect its users' information," the firm added.
The FTC's intervention is being linked to the Washington-based campaign group, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), that filed a complaint in December 2009 claiming that privacy setting changes "violate user expectations, diminish user privacy and contradict Facebook's own representations".
EPIC noted that the website's users, security experts and others had voiced opposition to the change. (ANI)
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