By By Gemma Fox Feb 18, 2010 in Internet At the end of last year social networking site Facebook faced widespread criticism over the change in its privacy settings. Now the site is being sued by five people over those privacy changes. While Facebook claims privacy changes actually increased the level of privacy for users, the lawsuit says the average user's privacy is now decreased. Before the After the change, however, much more information is left available to be seen, including pictures, friends lists, organisations the user may follow and geographical information. It's not clear what damages the lawsuit is seeking but it does say the message Facebook gave its users about the changes was, "misleading, confusing and disingenuous." The lawsuit says, “Changes to the privacy settings that Facebook implemented and represented to increase User privacy had the outright opposite effect of resulting in the public dissemination of personal information that was originally private." The The lawsuit says, “The privacy setting procedures are grossly ineffective and users are misled into allowing Facebook to having their personal information easily accessed for commercial use, exposing them to identity theft, harassment, embarrassment, intrusion and all types of cybercrime." When Facebook announced the changes last year, it faced criticism from various sources. Critics argued personal information would be exposed without users knowing it. In his Electric Frontier Foundation The class action suit has been filed in the US District court for Northern District in California and concerns the privacy changes that Facebook made at the end of last year. The suit has been filed by five Facebook members on their behalf and on behalf of all Facebook users.While Facebook claims privacy changes actually increased the level of privacy for users, the lawsuit says the average user's privacy is now decreased.Before the changes , information was only available to friends. Anyone not approved as a friend would only see a name and network.After the change, however, much more information is left available to be seen, including pictures, friends lists, organisations the user may follow and geographical information.It's not clear what damages the lawsuit is seeking but it does say the message Facebook gave its users about the changes was, "misleading, confusing and disingenuous."The lawsuit says, “Changes to the privacy settings that Facebook implemented and represented to increase User privacy had the outright opposite effect of resulting in the public dissemination of personal information that was originally private."The lawsuit also says users now have 29 privacy settings with which to contend and those settings are spread over a number of pages. It also alleges many users are unaware of what information they have left for people to see.The lawsuit says, “The privacy setting procedures are grossly ineffective and users are misled into allowing Facebook to having their personal information easily accessed for commercial use, exposing them to identity theft, harassment, embarrassment, intrusion and all types of cybercrime."When Facebook announced the changes last year, it faced criticism from various sources. Critics argued personal information would be exposed without users knowing it.In his Electric Frontier Foundation blog last December, Kevin Bankston wrote: "Our conclusion? These new "privacy" changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before. Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data." More about Facebook, Law suit, Privacy, Zuckerberg, Location More news from facebook law suit privacy zuckerberg location