Social networking giant Facebook has finally agreed to make required improvements to its privacy policy, Irish Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes announced.

The Data Protection Commissioner said that Facebook would make more than a dozen improvements to its privacy policy within the next six months.

It may be noted here that Facebook stores all user data and operations outside the UUS and Canada in Ireland.

The social networking site has agreed to improve its privacy practices following an investigation by Irish regulators. The investigation was launched in October following numerous complaints about the way Facebook treats users' personal data.

The site was also accused of creating "shadow profiles" of non-members. Regulators found that Facebook was collecting non-users' data for security purposes, but it was not creating shadow profiles.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner said, "While certain data which could be used to build what we have seen termed as a `shadow profile' of a non-user was received by Facebook, no actual use of this nature was made of such data."

Facebook is the world's most popular social networking platform, with more than 800 million users worldwide.