In a strongly worded letter, European data protection officials called changes to the social networking site's default setting "unacceptable".
Facebook was told to have default settings that guaranteed user profiles could only be viewed by selected contacts, with users being able to choose whether or not their data should be made available to search engines.
The , allowing users profiles to become accessible to third parties by default and parts of their profiles, including friends’ lists, being made public.
Among the suggestions of the Commission's Article 29 Working Party is the idea of using pseudonyms for individual Facebook users to ensure their privacy is protected.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the company had received a letter from 'The Article 29 Working Party', and said it was being reviewed in detail.
The spokesperson added: "While there are many things in their letter we agree on, there are others where we do not, such as around the party’s suggested use of pseudonyms on social networks.
"Facebook has always been based on a real-name culture, and we fundamentally believe this leads to greater accountability and a safer and more trusted environment for our users. There are plenty of places on the internet where a person can be anonymous — Facebook is not one of them.
"We already enable users to exclude themselves from being indexed by search engines, and recently introduced granular data permissions for applications. We are happy to continue working with The Article 29 Working Party."
The news follows Facebook's head of international business development's admission that Facebook failed in educating its users on maintaining their online privacy, .
Christian Hernandez admitted the social networking site had "not done a good job" in educating users on how to use their privacy settings.
Meanwhile, US senators are also calling for Facebook to overturn its changes to the site that allow users' information to be shared more widely with third-party sites.
Facebook is understood to be holding a meeting tomorrow to discuss issues surrounding its privacy settings.
The spokesperson said: "We already enable users to exclude themselves from being indexed by search engines, and recently introduced granular data permissions for applications. We are happy to continue working with The Article 29 Working Party."
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