The United States Federal Trade Commission announced on Tuesday an agreement with Facebook to settle charges that the company deceived consumers over multiple privacy complaints. 

The eight-count complaint made by the FTC against Facebook said the company made promises it did not keep which were "unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law," the FTC stated in a press release. "Facebook is obligated to keep the promises about privacy that it makes to its hundreds of millions of users," said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC in the release. 

Under the proposed agreement, which can be made final as early as December 30, Facebook must get consumers' approval before making changes to the way their data is used and shared and cannot make misrepresentations about the privacy or security of users personal information. Facebook also agrees to all periodic assessments of its privacy practices by auditors. All user material must also be made inaccessible thirty-days after deletion. If approved the agreement would be in place for the next 20-years.

Complaints against Facebook all had to do with users privacy including what information is displayed privately and public on users profiles, the access third-party applications have, information that is shared with advertisers and the deletion of accounts. In one complaint the FTC says Facebook made changes to its websites that automatically displayed information to the public that was designated to be private. The change was made without warning users before hand. 

Third-party applications were a major factor in the complaints as the FTC claims they have access to almost of users personal data, even if the apps don't need it. The commission says that Facebook's "Verified Apps" program did nothing to protect users as applications under that program were not all certified to be secure. In addition, if users selected "friends only" when sharing something, a third-party application being used by a friend could see all the data that the original user shared. 

A lot of confusion has come about when Facebook users want to leave the service, they can deactivate their account or delete it. The FTC says that even after users did this some of their content, including pictures and videos, were still available. The commission also boldly stated, "Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did."

FTC attorney Laura Berger, who worked on the case, said on the commission's Twitter account that if Facebook is found violating the settlement while in duration fines will be $16,000 per violation per day.

As Facebook changes some may ask if the FTC is holding the company back from innovating but the Chairman opposes this theory. "Facebook's innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy," said Leibowitz in the release. "The FTC action will ensure it will not."