Popular social networking site Facebook is breaching¹ Canadian law by holding on to users' personal information indefinitely, a report has concluded.

一项报告指出，流行社交网站Facebook掌握了使用者的个人资料，触犯了加拿大法律。

Facebook is one of the world\'s most popular social networking sites

An investigation² by Canada's privacy commission found the US-based website also gave "confusing or incomplete" information to subscribers（捐款人）.

Facebook says it is aiming to safeguard users' privacy without compromising（折衷） their experience of the site.

More than 200 million people actively³ use Facebook.

They include about 12 million in Canada, more than one in three of the population.

'Practical solutions'

Canadian Privacy Commissioner⁴ Jennifer Stoddart laid out the findings of the report at a news conference in Ottawa.

She accepted that Facebook regarded privacy issues as a top concern "and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates".

Facebook's policy of holding on to subscribers' personal information, even after their accounts had been deactivated⁵, was one area that breached⁶ Canada's privacy laws, she said.

The law requires organisations to retain such information only for as long as it necessary to meet appropriate（适当的） purposes, she was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

The report said Facebook's information about privacy practices was "often confusing or incomplete", and urged the site to make its policies more transparent⁷ to users.

Facebook was also criticised for failing to adequately（足够地，充分地） restrict access of users' personal details to some of the 950,000 developers in 180 countries who provide applications, such as games, for the site.

In response, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly told AFP it was working with the commission to resolve the issues.

"Overall, we are looking for practical solutions that operate at scale and respect the fact that people come to share and not to hide," he said.

"We continue our dialogue and have every confidence that we will come to acceptable conclusions. I think the concerns are fully⁸ resolvable（可分解的，可解决的）".

Ms Stoddart said she would review Facebook's progress in 30 days.

Under Canadian law, she can take the case to a federal court to have her recommendations enforced, the BBC's Lee Carter in Toronto says.