Washington: Facebook has reportedly made official changes to its privacy policy, stressing that what a user posts on the social networking site can be used as advertisements.
The change in the policy states that by having an account on the site, a user is allowing the company to use their postings and other personal data for advertising, with no exception for teenagers.
According to the New York Times, the social networking giant faced criticism over its ad policies and prompted the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize the company`s plans.
The report said that the new changes do not bring in drastic change when it comes to privacy of teenagers, but push the users to share more data online while making that information easier to find.
Facebook`s Sponsored Stories feature involves rebroadcasting user posts praising a company`s product to their friends and advertisers find such endorsement ads very appealing because people tend to trust recommendations from friends over other types of ads.
The social networking giant has not clarified on provisions about protecting children`s information when using it in advertising and whether comments made on such sponsored stories would be further used for commercial purpose or not, the report added.
