The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has said that that the social networking site will withdraw changes recently made to its terms of service in respect of retention of data.

The wording of the new terms seemed to suggest Facebook would retain personal data even if a user deleted their account; they deleted a provision that said users could remove their data at any time. Mr Zuckerberg had said that the reasoning behind this was to ensure that any comments or messages left by that person on pages of other users would not also disappear.

The changes had been questioned and heavily criticised. Simon Davies of Privacy International called the changes "a breach of faith by Facebook" and criticised the company for allowing commercial and legal concerns to come before its commitment to its users. He recommended that Facebook should commit to a privacy policy that would allow users to delete all data from its systems within a specified time period.

Mr Zuckerberg had originally defended the changes, but in the face of widespread negative feedback, he announced that Facebook would be returning to its previous terms of service. However, he said the move was only temporary "while we resolve the issues that people have raised". The company still intends to substantially revise the terms from their current form. Mr Zuckerberg stated that the terms would be written clearly in language that everyone can understand. Currently, it is not clear how much data, or what types of data, is retained by Facebook if a user decides to terminate their account.

The reaction to the Facebook changes are reflective of wider debate about ownership of data stored on social network accounts - including comments posted and videos and photos uploaded by users – and what happens when a user decides to terminate their account. Mr Zuckerberg stressed that users "own their information and control who they share it with".

Meantime, it only proves it's always worth reading the small print…