Consumer, privacy and Internet rights groups asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Facebook's alleged offline tracking of its users as well as the site's new Ticker and Timeline features.

The complainants, who include the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), claim that Facebook is committing unfair and deceptive business practice for tracking users after they logged out.

Citing Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic's Sept. 25 post, Facebook placed cookies on users' browsers to track them when they are offline.

Facebook denied the accusation.

"There was no security or privacy breach," Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, said in an e-mail, according to Bloomberg. "Facebook did not store or use any information it should not have."

Noyes added that the new feature has a privacy control users can set to limit other users' access to personal information.
David Jacobs, consumer protection fellow for EPIC, also claims that the Ticker and Timeline, which details biographical information, increase privacy risks of users.

Facebook introduced the new features to keep users away from rival social networking sites of Apple Inc. and Google Inc. It is matching every new feature the rivals introduce, such as video and music sharing services.

Facebook has "no interest in tracking people," Bloomberg quoted engineer Gregg Stefancik as saying in a recent blog post. "We do not share or sell the information we see when you visit a website with a Facebook social plugin to third parties and we do not use it to deliver ads to you."

Also asking FTC to investigate the matter are American Civil Liberties Union, the American Library Association, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the Center for Digital Democracy (CDG), the Center for Media and Democracy, Consumer Action, Consumer Watchdog, PrivacyActivism and Privacy Times.

CDG executive director says the new Facebook changes were intended to raise more ad revenues for the site before it goes public or reveal its financial results to U.S. regulators by April 30 next year.