Facebook Offers More Disclosure to Users

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/technology/facebook-offers-more-disclosure-to-users.html?hp

Facebook, seeking to address criticism of the social network’s privacy practices, said Thursday that it would provide users with an expanded, downloadable archive of the many types of data on individuals that the company stores and tracks.

In a posting on its privacy blog, Facebook said that it was expanding its downloadable archive feature, called Download Your Information, to provide greater transparency on the types of data on individuals that the company stores.

The expanded archive, which Facebook said would be rolled out gradually to its 845 million monthly active users, goes beyond the first archive made available in 2010, which has drawn scrutiny from privacy advocates and regulators on the Continent.

Facebook is preparing for an initial public stock sale planned for May, which is expected to value the company at $100 billion in the most definitive valuation of a social networking business.

The archive Facebook published two years ago gave users a copy of their photos, posts, messages, list of friends and chat conversations. The new version, Facebook said, includes previous user names, friend requests and the Internet protocol addresses of the computers that users have logged in from. More categories of information will be made available in the future, Facebook said.