A FAIRFAX journalist was arrested by Queensland Police yesterday after an article he wrote about vulnerabilities in Facebook's privacy controls was published on smh.com.au.

He was later released without charge but police retained custody of his iPad.

Ben Grubb...arrested over his report on Facebook security at AusCERT.

Ben Grubb, the deputy technology editor of the Herald website, was attending an IT security conference at a resort on the Gold Coast where a security expert, Christian Heinrich, demonstrated how he had gained access to the privacy-protected Facebook photos of the wife of the HackLabs director, Chris Gatford.

Mr Heinrich told Fairfax Digital he gained access to the photos to show that people who use social networking sites should not trust their privacy settings.