Social networking giant Facebook has settled its lawsuit with the US Federal Trade Commission, which has accused the company of engaging in ‘unfair and deceptive' business practices.

Under the settlement, the FTC has asked the company to be considerate towards its users' privacy and submit to privacy audits for the next 20 years.

The FTC claimed that Facebook had made changes to its privacy policies in December 2009, without asking for user permission or consent, making their private information available publicly for its own gain.

Facebook, which maintains that it does not share user data with advertisers, was also accused of share user data with advertisers whenever they clicked on an ad on their page in some cases. The company also accused of sharing user data with application developers.

Meanwhile, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in a blog post that the company had committed some mistakes but had now rectified them.

"I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes. In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we've done," he wrote on the blog, addressed to the Facebook community.