All Remaining Confusion To Be Dismissed By Facebook.

Facebook has sketched new features that claim to make sharing information easier, and also clear up any misconceptions one might have about what one means to the company in a proposed update to its data use policy.

An official document has scattered disclosures throughout that claims to summarize what Facebook is doing with all the information users make available to it. The document that generally most users don’t actually read.

As per the update planned by Facebook, it will include one’s profile image in the facial recognition database it user to push tagging suggestions to users as and when they upload images. Although, Facebook identifies photos of the user in images that his/her friends upload and compares them to other images the user has been tagged in; adding his/her profile picture to the database that is believed to simplify tagging in images and make it easier for one to share his/her memories and experiences with their friends.

Unfortunately, this feature won’t be available in Europe due to concerns from privacy regulators which are not implemented in the U.S. Additionally; the updated policy summarizes how Facebook uses personal information for advertising purposes.Reports claim that, between the phase of January 2011 and August 2012, Facebook charged advertisers $234 million for ‘Sponsored Stories’.

However, Facebook’s sponsored stories were essentially ads which featured images and/or Likes of the user in a way to overcome resistance to promotional copy of their friends. In 2011, Facebook was sued by a group of users, charged that Sponsored Stories violated user privacy. The company paid $20 million to the plaintiffs & decided to clear up their privacy policies and successfully settled the suit, prompting the release of the proposed data policy.

CNET claims that, Facebook had to include more detailed information on how exactly it was using personal information for Sponsored Stories, as per the settlement. The changes proposed by Facebook uses user’s likes and interactions with advertisers, keywords from his/her posts, and what the company interprets from one’s use of Facebook in order to show their content that one might find interesting.

However, Facebook has given its users, an option to opt out of facial recognition tagging and also having the social network use your information for advertising purposes. It takes some clicking around in order to change most of the privacy settings on Facebook.

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