Farmville is leaking your data

Facebook has become the world's most popular social network but is facing new concerns over protecting user privacy.

Facebook, the internet social networking site, has become the world's most popular social network with around 500 million users, but it has been dogged by complaints about poor privacy protection - this time Farmville and other popular apps have been found to be transmitting users' identities to third parties.

According to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, Facebook applications are sending Facebook ID codes that can be used to look up individual profiles, which can include a person’s real name, age, hometown, or other details, to ad networks.

The WSJ reviewed the top 10 apps (pieces of software that let Facebook's users play games or share common interests with one another) on Facebook and found all of them to be in violation of their and Facebook’s privacy policies because they were transmitting user’s IDs to outside companies.

The apps included FarmVille, Texas HoldEm Poler and FrontierVille. Three of the apps, in addition to sending the user’s ID codes, were also transmitting personal information about a user’s friends to outside companies.

The apps reviewed by the journal were all sending the information to at least 25 advertising and data firms, some of which build profiles or dossiers of internet users by tracking their online activities.

After the WSJ informed Facebook that the apps were transmitting the personal information, a Facebook official responded by saying that the company's "technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in control of their information."

Several of the offending apps have become unavailable to Facebook user’s since Friday and it seems Facebook has shut them down after the WSJ informed them.

German ministers slam Facebook for privacy glitch

German ministers criticised social networking site Facebook on Sunday for failing to respect privacy, following a report of a serious flaw that allowed non-subscribers access to private data.

German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine reported that a glitch potentially allowed anyone access to the contact lists of subscribers.

New subscribers to Facebook are required to enter their email address. However, by entering the email address of an existing user, it was possible to view their full list of contacts, until they had responded to a security request.

This would potentially allow access to hundreds of names, contact details and other personal information, the newspaper reported.

Privacy a Facebook priority, says director Randi Zuckerberg

The company's director of market development, Randi Zuckerberg addressed these concerns in a forum on Sunday in Dubai.

"Privacy, I would say, is the number one most important thing for our company, and we're always listening to feedback," Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, said on the first day of the GITEX information and communication technology exhibition.

"We've recently rolled out a lot of new updates and controls to privacy. You can now, every single time you post something, you can control who sees that. You can even pick certain people in your network, you can create lists," she said.

"We're always trying to listen to feedback and giving people more and more controls."

Earlier this year, 14 privacy and consumer protection groups sent a letter to the US Congress saying "Facebook continues to manipulate the privacy settings of users and its own privacy policy so that it can take personal information provided by users for a limited purpose and make it widely available for commercial purposes."