Facebook has downplayed the significance of a company-wide meeting to discuss privacy issues.
The blogosphere described the meeting as a panic measure following weeks of criticism over the way it handles members' data.
Several US senators have made public calls for Facebook to rethink its privacy safeguards. The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, launched a petition directed at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It called on him to regain the trust of users by giving them control over all the information shared via Facebook.
A number of high-profile users have also deleted their Facebook accounts after the site introduced a new feature that lets non-Facebook websites, or third parties, post the personal views of Facebook users without their consent.
Industry watchers said the company, which is the world's biggest social network, has shown it has "lost touch" over the issue.
"Most of us got onto Facebook because we want to know what our high school quarterback is doing or to reconnect with old school friends, not worry about how our information is going to be used," Catharine P Taylor, media blogger with news site BNET.com told the BBC.
"They need to get back to basics, throw out their policy and start all over again," she said. "It's way too complex for most people to understand how to change their settings and if they can't make it simple for people to make choices, it will cost them."
A report this week by the New York Times revealed that Facebook's privacy policy has 50 different settings and 170 options.
Peter Rojas, co-founder of the gadget site gdgt.com, told ABC News he quit because he "was spending more time managing my account than actually using my account. "Having to constantly monitor the privacy settings was way too complicated. You can never be sure you caught everything."
On the same day as the all-hands meeting at Facebook, the company launched new security measures to battle spam and other malicious attacks.
The upgrades include being able to approve the devices users commonly use to log in and being notified when that account has been accessed via a device that has not been approved. Another feature is giving users the ability to block suspicious logins before they happen.
"We're confident that these new tools and systems will do a lot to prevent unauthorised logins and the nuisance they can cause," said Lev Popov, a software engineer on Facebook's site integrity team.
"As always, though, the first line of defence is you. We need you to help by practicing safe behaviour on Facebook and wherever you go online."
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