Mediaboss Marketing

Calcutta News.Net Tuesday 25th September, 2012

LONDON Facebook has termed as false a rumour that users' private messages were appearing on public timelines even as the social network's managers were summoned by the French government to explain claims that some users' privacy had been breached.

Users, mostly in France, reported that "private messages" sent between 2007-2009 were suddenly public.

Facebook told the BBC: "[The] messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users' profile pages.

Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg and the junior minister for the digital economy, Fleur Pellerin, said Facebook managers had been summoned before France's CNIL data watchdog to explain the rumours.

"Clear and transparent explanations must be given without delay," they said.

"This incident underlines once again the importance of protecting personal data in the digital world and the lack of transparency in handling them," reports AFP.

A meeting was held between Facebook managers and CNIL officials.

A source at the company told the BBC that engineers said there was "no way" the two areas of data could get mixed up.

The source said that "no mechanism" had ever been created that would allow a private message to be published onto a user's wall or timeline.

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Social networking site Facebook denies private messages becoming public