With an increasing number of avid Facebook users taking the exit route out of the popular social networking site, largely because of the recently-introduced continuous changes to its privacy policy, there are implicit indications that the social networks are apparently heralding the end of users' online privacy.

Noting that the concept of online privacy has undergone a notable change from what it was a year back, Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), said: "It wasn't long ago we were worried about advertisers planting cookies on our PC. With today's trends, keeping a handle on your privacy is going to become even harder" in future.

While a large number of Facebook's nearly 450 million users have, over the years, been watching their personal data being shared with advertisers, the new changes that the site recently introduced delivered a further blow.

The changes exposed users' personal information to a much wider range of marketers, via features like Instant Personalization, whereby users' personal data can automatically be shared with certain third-party sites. However, widespread criticism of the policy forced Facebook to make the contentious feature an `optional' one for the users.

Nonetheless, saying that social networks have virtually made public sharing of private lives fairly commonplace, Jeremy Mishkin, an attorney specializing in privacy law, said: "The real issue is how best to assure individuals they have control of their own information."