FACEBOOK has promised to fix a major privacy breach by this evening, after it was revealed the website was tracking users across the internet.
Australian technician Nik Cubrilovic blogged about the tracking on Saturday, and was called by Facebook's engineers in the US yesterday.
"Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit," Mr Cubrilovic wrote in his blog post.
The accusation quickly spread around the world and the social networking site was forced to defend its position. Facebook reportedly promised to modify its technology so that users could no longer be tracked once they left the site.
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Its current technology puts "cookies" in internet browsers that track which websites users go to, email addresses and other information that could be used by third-party advertisers.
Mr Cubrilovic said the big response to his revelation had been overwhelming.
"I haven't put the phone down this morning (and) have media calling random family members asking to talk to me," he tweeted.
"Facebook does not track users across the web," a Facebook spokesperson said in an earlier statement.
"Instead, we use cookies on social plugins to personalise content (eg. show you what your friends liked), to help maintain and improve what we do (eg. measure click-through rate), or for safety and security (eg. keeping underage kids from trying to sign up with a different age).
"No information that we receive when you see a social plugin is used to target ads; we delete or anonymise this (tracking) information within 90 days, and we never sell your information."
But Associate Professor Axel Bruns from the Queensland University of Technology said that it was not only Facebook people have to be concerned about.
"We think we understand Facebook as an organisation, but at the same time, exactly who has access to that cookie is another question," he told The Advertiser.
He said that cookies were generally used to store account information, but could be used by unscrupulous organisations to track the links people click on.
"They may see that every morning at 9am you log on to some internal website for the place you work for so they can see where you're working," he said.
"It may be possible to associate what you do online with your Facebook profile . . . they can look at what you're clicking on and your status updates."
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