Facebook guarded on privacy meeting details

Facebook's privacy stance is generating heated debate

Facebook has been tight-lipped on the details of a company meeting with its employees held yesterday to discuss the issue of data privacy.

The social networking site admitted that the discussion was "productive", but declined to say whether it will change its privacy policies, according to reports.

The meeting follows ongoing complaints about Facebook's lack of privacy, and is likely to have been a chance for the company to brief employees on the situation.

"We have an open culture and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest," said a Facebook spokesperson.

"We don't share specifics around internal meetings, but we had a productive discussion about the latest product announcements and how we can work on providing the best experiences for users and developers."

The latest Facebook privacy concerns have been stirred by the release of some instant messages between Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and a friend while at Harvard university where he first set up Facebook.

The messages, seen by the Business Insider web site, appear to show an astonishing disregard for privacy.

Zuckerberg had offered his friend access to the data on Facebook users he had collected so far, suggesting that the users were "dumb" to trust him.

A Facebook spokesperson could not confirm or deny the story. "We are not going to debate claims from anonymous sources or dated allegations that attempt to characterise Mark's and Facebook's views towards privacy," the spokesperson said.

"Everyone within the company understands that our success is inextricably linked with people's trust in the company and the service we provide."

Yesterday the official European Union data protection agency wrote a letter to Facebook criticising the changes to privacy settings made in December, and describing the new policy as "unacceptable".

In April, German consumer protection minister Ilse Aigner wrote an open letter to Facebook, expressing her concern for the social network's users after changes proposed in March that will allow the site to share personal information with "pre-approved" third-party sites.

In January, 10 privacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and EPIC, filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission about Facebook's privacy policy.