Though Facebook is often criticized for their privacy practices, the site has made efforts recently to step up their protection of user information.  Last week, Facebook dropped two mobile ad partners, HasOffers and Kontagent, for violating the site’s privacy practices. The two mobile ad companies held onto user data longer than their contracts with Facebook allowed, and they also failed to notify users of data collection through updates to their privacy policies.

“After working with a third-party auditor to review the practices of all our mobile measurement partners, we discovered that some weren’t adhering to the terms they agreed to,” Facebook said. “As a result, we’ve removed a couple of our partners from the program. We take our contracts seriously, and will continue to act swiftly anytime we find out they are being violated.”

Facebook takes its mobile technology and advertising very seriously indeed (it accounts for a significant amount of their profits), and routinely conducts privacy audits of all of the companies it does business with in that space. While Facebook found no serious data leaks or privacy breaches in its audits, it’s encouraging that the site decided to drop its mobile partners anyway. It may be a PR move to show investors and users that they care about privacy and security, but Facebook holding its advertising vendors accountable ultimately benefits users nonetheless.