DHAKA: Bangladesh lifted a ban on Facebook on Sunday, a week after it blocked the popular social networking site over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and "obnoxious" images of its leaders. The Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) ordered the country's international Internet gateway providers to unblock the site after the US-based company agreed to remove the obnoxious images and content. "The Facebook is now open," BTRC vice chairman Hasan Mahmud Delwar told media.The move came after Pakistan lifted a similar ban on Facebook last week following a court order.Islamabad had blocked the social networking site, video website YouTube and 1,200 web pages over a row about "blasphemous" content on the Internet.Bangladesh banned Facebook on May 29 after officials said cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed posted on the site "hurt the religious sentiments of the country's Muslim population".Thousands of people belonging to Muslim groups staged protests over the cartoons which they branded "anti-Islamic propaganda", and demanded the site be banned.
Facebook.com is visited monthly by 540 million people, or slightly more than 35 per cent of the internet population, according to Google Ad Planner worldwide data gathered using recently-acquired Double Click.
Approximately 570 billion pages are viewed monthly at Facebook.com, more than eight times as many pages as are viewed each month at second-place Yahoo.com, which gets 490 million visitors, according to Google.
The figures support word from Facebook that it has not been abandoned by members despite carping by politicians, consumer groups and privacy advocates that want tighter safeguards on personal information at the website.
Only 23,515 people had signed up as of Friday at a We're Quitting Facebook website as "committed" to dump the social-networking service as part of a campaign to stage a mass protest on May 31.
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That number represents less than .006 per cent of Facebook's more than 400 million members.
Facebook is overhauling privacy controls in the face of a barrage of criticism that it is betraying the trust which has made it the world's biggest social network.
Facebook redesigned its privacy settings page to provide a single control for content and "significantly reduce" the amount of information that is always visible to everyone.
Facebook also said it is giving users more control over how outside applications or websites access information at the service.
"This is a pretty big overhaul to the system we already have,"
Mr Zuckerberg said while outlining the changes during a Wednesday press briefing at the social network's headquarters in the California city of Palo Alto.
"Now we are making it so there is less information that has to be public. People want a simple way to control the way information is shared with third parties, so that is what we are doing," he said.
The revamped privacy controls began rolling out on Wednesday.Facebook last month sparked criticism from privacy and consumer groups, US politicians and the European Union by adding the ability for partner websites to incorporate data regarding members of the social-networking service.
Critics continue to call for Facebook to make all user information private by default and then let people designate what they want to share case-by-case in an "opt-in" model.
Facebook has rejected such a model, saying the service is based on a premise that people want to connect and share with friends and people around them.
Facebook is beefing up privacy protections on the world's most popular online social network, addressing mounting pressure to better secure personal data exchanged among its nearly 500 million members.The issue has come to a head in recent months amid concern that Facebook makes it possible for Internet stalkers, cyber criminals and even nosy neighbors to gain a wealth of information about its users without their knowledge thanks to a confusing system for setting privacy safeguards.
For instance, Facebook will allow users to block all third parties from accessing their information without their explicit permission. It will also make less information available in its user directory and reduce the number of settings required to make all information private from nearly 50 to less than 15.
Still, Zuckerberg said Facebook's default settings will continue to make it relatively easy for users to obtain information about each other as the company walks a delicate line between protecting privacy rights and promoting social networking.
"Users use the service because they love sharing information," Zuckerberg said on a webcast presentation.
Facebook is increasingly challenging more established Internet players like Yahoo Inc and Google Inc for consumers' online time and for ad dollars.
While Facebook will make it simpler for users to boost their privacy safeguards, they will have to opt out of default policies by which much of their data is publicly available.
"But there are other voices that will continue -- governments, public sector and privacy advocates," Valdes said. "The fundamental issues won't go away. They will reappear over time. Again and again."
Valdes said that privacy concerns will continue to crop up with Facebook and other social networks because such sites need to balance the right of users to interact safely over the Internet with the need to generate profits by sharing information with advertisers and other business partners.
Facebook investors include Digital Sky Technologies, Microsoft Corp, Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing and venture capital firms Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners.
Controversy about Facebook's privacy policies has mounted over the past year as its membership has grown and criminals have increasingly used its vast data banks to access information to help them swindle its users.
A month ago, four U.S. senators told the company they objected to a recent change that made a user's current city, hometown, likes, interests and friends publicly available. That information had previously been seen only by friends.
One of those lawmakers, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, said on Wednesday that Facebook's new privacy controls represented a significant first step in addressing his concerns.
"Facebook has heard the call of its users and realizes that much greater privacy protections are needed," Schumer said in a statement.
But he added that he would prefer that Facebook share its users' information only if they opt in to doing so.
The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has asked the U.S. government to investigate Facebook's privacy policies, said that the new efforts do not go far enough.
"We think it's time for Congress to update the privacy laws. We can't be dependent on Facebook to decide on how much privacy people on the Internet will have. That's something that has to be established in law," said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg,
Palo Alto, California-based Facebook is a private company and does not disclose financial data, though analyst estimates for its 2009 revenue range from $500 million to $650 million, primarily from selling online ads targeted at users based on their activity and profile information on Facebook.
“I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time,” said a message attributed to Zuckerberg.
“I know we've made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve.”
Zuckerberg, who turned 26 years old on May 14, said Facebook would start talking publicly this week about privacy control modifications.
“We've been listening to all the feedback and have been trying to distill it down to the key things we need to improve,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“We're going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we've built this week.”
Facebook on Saturday said it plans to simplify privacy controls at the popular social-networking service to appease critics.
Facebook contended that members like new programs rolled out at the California-based Internet hotspot but want easy ways to opt out of sharing personal information with third-party applications or websites.
Features introduced last month include the ability for partner websites to incorporate Facebook data, a move that would further expand the social network's presence on the Internet.
Facebook has been under fire from US privacy and consumer groups, US lawmakers and the European Union over new features that critics claim compromise the privacy of its more than 400 million members.
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