With a growing number of enthusiastic Facebook consumers departing from the well-liked social networking site, mainly owing to the recently-launched incessant changes to its privacy guidelines, there are inherent clues that the social networks are evidently indicating the end of consumers' privacy on the internet.

Observing that the notion of online privacy has witnessed a remarkable change from what it was a year ago, 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.

Whilst a huge number of Facebook's almost 450 million customers have, over the years, been seeing their personal information being shared with promoters, the new amendments that the website recently initiated delivered an additional blow.

The reforms depicted users' personal data to a broad range of marketers, by means of features such as Instant Personalization, whereby consumers' personal data can automatically be shared with some third-party websites.

However, extensive condemnation of the strategy coerced Facebook to make the controversial feature an `optional' one for the consumers.

Nevertheless, saying that social networking sites have actually made public sharing of private info quite ordinary, Jeremy Mishkin, a lawyer specializing in privacy law, said, "The real issue is how best to assure individuals they have control of their own information".