Facebook Offers More Disclosure to Users

The New York Times: Facebook has updated its “Download Your Information” feature so that it provides users with more categories of data. In the past, users could access an archive of their photos, posts, messages, list of friends and chat conversations. Now, the social network has added previous user names, friend requests and IP addresses to the archives, and the company plans to add more types of data to the service in the future.

Facebook first provided the download feature in order to make it easier to comply with European data laws. However, some critics charge that the company still has not met its legal obligations. “We welcome that Facebook users are now getting more access to their data, but Facebook is still not in line with the European Data Protection Law,” said Max Schrems, who filed a complaint against Facebook with European officials. “With the changes, Facebook will only offer access to 39 data categories, while it is holding at least 84 such data categories about every user.”