Privacy rights
It had to settle a case for $9.5 million after its now defunct "Beacon" service violated its members' privacy rights by not requiring their consent to allow the company to broadcast their internet activity.
Ireland's watchdog had said the company risked facing legal action under European privacy laws if it failed to comply and said on Friday the social network would have to continue to engage with it as new features are introduced.
In its report, the regulator said Facebook had made particular progress in providing better transparency for its users, handing them more control over settings and the ability to more readily access their personal data.
Facebook's director of policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa Richard Allan told Reuters the company was committed to bringing the tag suggest feature back once it had taken steps to put it in line with EU guidance.
Allan said the move should also remove the threat of legal action from Germany's Hamburg Data Commissioner over the facial-recognition feature.
"Clearly the announcement today means we think there are no grounds for them to proceed with that," Allan said, adding that Facebook's privacy changes would have no impact at all on its advertising strategy.
Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser agreed that Facebook's advertising business and its ability to let marketers aim pitches at different groups of users would not be affected.
"They could probably have a lot less data and it would still dwarf other comparable alternatives," he said. "They'll still be able to target better than others."
The regulator said the outstanding areas of concern included minimizing the potential for advertising to target users based on words that could be considered as sensitive personal data, but both it and Facebook said they were confident that these issues would be dealt with speedily.
An Austrian-based group of student activists, Europe-v-facebook, which has succeeded in extracting some concessions on privacy from Facebook, said the law had been waived for the tech group.
"The Irish ODPC says that Facebook has not fully implemented the suggestions and that further work has to be done, but there seem to be no consequences or fines for not complying with these suggestions," said the group in a statement.
It had to settle a case for $9.5 million after its now defunct "Beacon" service violated its members' privacy rights by not requiring their consent to allow the company to broadcast their internet activity.
Ireland's watchdog had said the company risked facing legal action under European privacy laws if it failed to comply and said on Friday the social network would have to continue to engage with it as new features are introduced.
In its report, the regulator said Facebook had made particular progress in providing better transparency for its users, handing them more control over settings and the ability to more readily access their personal data.
Facebook's director of policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa Richard Allan told Reuters the company was committed to bringing the tag suggest feature back once it had taken steps to put it in line with EU guidance.
Allan said the move should also remove the threat of legal action from Germany's Hamburg Data Commissioner over the facial-recognition feature.
"Clearly the announcement today means we think there are no grounds for them to proceed with that," Allan said, adding that Facebook's privacy changes would have no impact at all on its advertising strategy.
Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser agreed that Facebook's advertising business and its ability to let marketers aim pitches at different groups of users would not be affected.
"They could probably have a lot less data and it would still dwarf other comparable alternatives," he said. "They'll still be able to target better than others."
The regulator said the outstanding areas of concern included minimizing the potential for advertising to target users based on words that could be considered as sensitive personal data, but both it and Facebook said they were confident that these issues would be dealt with speedily.
An Austrian-based group of student activists, Europe-v-facebook, which has succeeded in extracting some concessions on privacy from Facebook, said the law had been waived for the tech group.
"The Irish ODPC says that Facebook has not fully implemented the suggestions and that further work has to be done, but there seem to be no consequences or fines for not complying with these suggestions," said the group in a statement.
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