FACEBOOK, OWNER of the world’s largest social-networking site, backed down from revisions made to its online service following complaints that the changes may hurt users’ privacy.

“Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised,” the company said in a message to users.

Criticism circulated on the internet over the weekend that the most popular social-networking website increased its control over members’ information, even after subscribers closed their accounts.

The decision highlights the challenges facing Facebook in communicating how it handles users’ data as people increasingly share information about themselves online.

The consumerist blog warned users not to add information to the site that “you don’t feel comfortable giving away forever”.

Facebook’s terms of service used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. “Not anymore,” author Chris Walters wrote in a February 15th post.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in Facebook’s blog this week that the company wouldn’t share information “in a way you wouldn’t want”.

“Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote in a post which announced the retraction of the changes. “We’ve decided to take a new approach . . . We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now.”

Facebook’s Terms of Use page showed September 23rd, 2008, as the date of its last revision, indicating the return to the earlier rules had been completed. The company says it has over 175 million active users. – (Bloomberg)