If you are hooked on Facebook, you are not alone. There is something ridiculously addictive about adding friends, poking people and playing games on this hugely successful social networking site. But there is trouble in Facebook land. Efforts by Facebook to, in theory, improve security for their users has stirred up a hornets nest of trouble that has gone as far as the Canadian Information Commissioner who may file charges against the site if they don’t get their act together.

If you have been on Facebook at all since it exploded into national and international attention, you know the drill of what security on the site is like. Facebook has fields on their personal information screen for every user where you can disclose every conceivable fact about your life. When you set up an account, all of that information is on display for anyone who knows your name to access. You have to take action by looking at the security settings to hide your personal information. And how to use those settings is not blatantly obvious for most users of the system.

Last year, Facebook made a big production of the fact that they were changing the way the website works to make it easier for users to manage who can see their private information. These changes were made simply because the Canadian Information Commissioner was already making trouble about the security of Facebook. The problem is that many people have reported to the authorities that the changes that Facebook made actually make it harder to manage their online security, not easier.

You would think if Facebook was going to go to the trouble of changing things to make them better, they would have actually made something better. But many people report that Facebook screwed it up. And the trouble in Facebook land is not just coming from Canada. The Federal Trade Commission is about to send a group they run called the Electronic Privacy Information Center after Facebook. I would not like to have a group like that after me, that’s for sure. Well, maybe if the group was run by bikini-wearing hotties… but that’s for another time.