Facebook is now the largest social networking site in America with 58.6% of all social networking site visitors in America. Facebook took the top spot from MySpace. Facebook recently made significant changes to its privacy settings and put in place recommended settings that would open a users profile up to many more people than most are available to now.

Marc Rotenberg from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said at the time the changes were announced, "Facebook is nudging the settings toward the 'disclose everything' position. That's not fair from the privacy perspective."

Yesterday, EPIC and nine other privacy and consumer groups filed a complaint with the FTC against the changes that Facebook made to its privacy settings urging the agency to open an investigation.

Rottenburg issued a statement saying, "This is the most significant case now before the Federal Trade Commission. More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service. The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

Facebook maintains that it has gone out of its way to inform its users that the privacy settings were changing. It also points out that the privacy settings can be kept just as they are now if the user specifies that they are to be kept. The problem in the eyes of the user groups is that the default or recommended settings opens the profiles up to many more viewers.

Facebook is hoping that by making the information in its user's profiles open to other users on Facebook and across the internet via search engines that it can gain more users and get ahead of the competition in the market. More viewers also means the ability to generate more ad revenue for the site.

A Facebook spokesperson said, "We've had productive discussions with dozens of organizations around the world about the recent changes and we're disappointed that EPIC has chosen to share their concerns with the FTC while refusing to talk to us about them."

The spokes person continued, "We have gone to great lengths to inform users about our platform changes, beginning with our July announcement; founder Mark Zuckerberg's open letter to our 350 million users; our robust press and analyst outreach; the notice-and-comment framework for our new privacy policy; and simple customization tools for users."