Facebook says India users not hit by hacking attack

Internet site Facebook Inc. Thursday said user accounts in India weren't affected by the spam attack which posted pornographic and violent images on the pages of users of the popular social networking website in the U.S. earlier this week.

Denying a recent media report, Facebook said that there have been inaccurate reports of users' accounts being hacked in India."This is not true. Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us".Facebook has 25 million users in India.

Earlier, a report on the Midday tabloid website said accounts of more than 200,000 Facebook users were hacked and weblinks to their morphed pornographic pictures were sent as news feeds to friends and family.

However, Facebook denied this, saying users' photos were not transferred to an unwanted site and that no accounts were compromised.Facebook's denial comes as the company Tuesday acknowledged a "coordinated spam attack" in the U.S. over the weekend, where some of its users were tricked into pasting and executing "malicious javascript" in their browser URL bar, causing them to share offensive content without knowing it.

"Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible," Facebook said, in a separate response to the attack overseas.

The company has a no-nudity policy and requires that members be at least 13 years old. Users are encouraged to report questionable content via links on Facebook pages. The social network also removes pornography on its own initiative.

"We are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms, and take action on those who is responsible for these types of content," the company said Thursday.

The site is facing challenges at a time when it is set to unveil a major redesign of the profile pages of its 800 million users. The redesign, called Timeline, is supposed to allow Facebook users to let the site organize all of their actions chronologically.