Even during the deactivation process, users will have the option to delete personal information.

Even otherwise, personal information of deactivated accounts will be deleted after a reasonable length of time. Facebook has also agreed to include more information in its terms of use statement for non-users who visit the site.

The networking site will also change its policy to explain what will happen in the event of a user's death. Users will have to give consent in case they want to be memorialized after death. Facebook expects the entire process to take up to one year to implement.

In their complaint to the Privacy Commission, the law students had said that the website was passing on users' personal information to advertisers without their permission.

Listing 21 privacy violations by Facebook, the students had said it infringed the law by failing to identify the purpose for which it collects users' personal information and obtains consent to use and disclose their personal information.

The complaint had said that the 'account settings'' page describes how to deactivate accounts, but not how to delete them to actually remove personal data from Facebook's servers.''

After its 13-month-long probe, the Privacy had found Facebook had 'serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates'' and given the site a month's notice to respond to its recommendations.

More than 12 million Canadians actively use Facebook.