Irish data protection officials have confirmed that an audit of Facebook's privacy practices is now underway.
"I can confirm that the on-site element of the audit commenced earlier this week," a spokeswoman from Ireland's Office of the Data Protection Commissioner said in an email today.
As reported last week, the audit will "assess Facebook's compliance with the requirements of the Irish Data Protection Acts as they apply to its users outside of the U.S. and Canada," the commission said.
"Facebook is cooperating fully with the audit and we would anticipate that it will implement any necessary changes," the commission said.
Irish officials have been in talks with Facebook for several months on privacy-related issues, stemming from a June controversy over its facial-recognition technology. That investigation is now officially in progress at Facebook's Dublin offices, as first reported by FoxNews.com.
The issue made headlines in recent weeks, however, after a 24-year-old Austrian law student, Max Schrems, asked Facebook to turn over the data it had stored about his Facebook activity and was shocked to find just how much information that included. Since issues concerning Facebook users outside of the U.S. and Canada are handled by Facebook's Dublin office, Schrems filed 22 separate complaints with Irish officials, asking them to investigate.
Among those complaints was one accusing Facebook of creating "shadow profiles" with the data imported from various outside services, like mobile phones, email contact lists, instant messaging services, invites to friends not on Facebook, and more.
"Facebook Ireland is gathering excessive amounts of information about data subjects without notice or consent by the data subject. In many cases, these information might be embarrassing or intimidating for the data subject," the complaint said. "This information might also constitute sensitive data such as political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation and so forth."
In a Friday statement, Facebook said "the allegations are false."
"For example, we enable you to send emails to your friends, inviting them to join Facebook. We keep the invitees' email address and name to let you know when they join the service. This practice is common among almost all services that involve invitations— from document sharing to event planning—and the assertion that Facebook is doing some sort of nefarious profiling is wrong," the company said. "In addition, Facebook offers more control than other services by enabling people to delete their email address from Facebook or to opt-out of receiving invites."