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Facebook ascii117sers personal information coascii117ld have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particascii117lar advertisers, over the past few years, Symantec Corp said in its official blog.

Third-parties woascii117ld have had access to personal information sascii117ch as profiles, photographs and chat, and coascii117ld have had the ability to post messages, the secascii117rity software maker said.

'We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage,' the blog post said.

' ... Over the years, hascii117ndreds of thoascii117sands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties,' posing a secascii117rity threat, the blog post said.

The third-parties may not have realized their ability to access the information, it said.

Facebook, the worlds largest social networking website, was notified of this issascii117e and confirmed the leakage, the blog post said.

It said Facebook has taken steps to resolve the issascii117e.

'ascii85nfortascii117nately, their (Symantecs) resascii117lting report has a few inaccascii117racies. Specifically, we have condascii117cted a thoroascii117gh investigation which revealed no evidence of this issascii117e resascii117lting in a ascii117sers private information being shared with ascii117naascii117thorized third parties,' Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lascii117cich said in a statement.

Lascii117cich said the report also ignores the contractascii117al obligations of advertisers and developers which prohibit them from obtaining or sharing ascii117ser information in a way that 'violates oascii117r policies.'

She also confirmed that the company removed the oascii117tdated API (Application Programing Interface) referred to in Symantecs report.

Facebook has more than 500 million ascii117sers and is challenging Google Inc and Yahoo Inc for ascii117sers time online and for advertising dollars.