That Facebook’s contentious privacy policies have invited the ire of German data protection officials became evident from the Wednesday announcement of the initiation of a formal probe against the social networking site in the country.

The data protection officials in Germany revealed that they have already sent a letter to Facebook about the launch of the investigations against the company. The officials have alleged that Facebook saves and accesses the personal information of people who do not use the site.

Noting that in case the allegations are found to be correct, Facebook may have to pay a penalty running into tens of thousands of euros, said Johannes Caspar, chief of Hamburg’s Data Protection Authority, said: “We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against data privacy laws.”

According to Caspar, there have been many complaints from people who are not signed up to Facebook, and whose personal data has been added to the site by friends. Casper accused Facebook of the unauthorized saving of the non-members’ details for marketing reasons.

Meanwhile, admitting that Facebook had received a letter from the Hamburg Data Protection Officer, Facebook’s public policy spokesman Andrew Noyes said on Wednesday that the company is presently reviewing the letter.

Noyes also added that Facebook will willingly respond to the letter within the August 11 timeframe that the German data protection officials have given for a formal response from the company.