Facebook denies publishing users’ private messages

Users turned to their Facebook accounts Monday to discover that their private messages have been published on their timelines for everyone to see.

This latest privacy issue, first reported on Monday evening by French newspaper Metro France, relates to messages sent via Facebook from 2007-2009 and was first thought to only affect users of the French site.

However, as news of the alleged breach has spread, so have stories from around the world that private messages are now in the public domain. 

Nevertheless, Facebook has been quick to issue a statement, telling the BBC that the messages in question have always been visible on users' profiles, regardless of the shift to the new timeline format and that "Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy."

Another, unnamed source at the social network went further, saying that there is no mechanism within its architecture that would allow a private message to be published to a user's wall or timeline. The same source also highlighted that similar claims were made in 2011 and following an investigation, were proved to be untrue.