Hackers are weighing in on the Facebook privacy controversy with creations that help people strengthen privacy or empty profile pages at the world's leading social networking service.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) technology fellow Chris Conley showed off an arsenal of such applications at the infamous DefCon gathering, which kicked off yesterday in Las Vegas.

"They are needed because people don't have control of their privacy and don't really understand," Conley said after the presentation.

"They give people options."

A programme written by Conley displays pictures, posts, or other profile data being accessed by applications at Facebook accounts. People can then see what personal information programmes are gleaning from their pages.

News stories about privacy control issues at Facebook may slip people's minds by the time they sit down at their computers, but Conley's application grabs their attention with a winning subject -- themselves.

"People love to hear about themselves, that is the thing that Facebook is great at," said Ceren Ercen, who worked briefly for the California company and wore a T-shirt bearing the words "Disgruntled Facebook ex-employee."

"People don't have the attention spans to carry over concerns they have to actual Facebook usage."

Ercen added that during her brief stint at Facebook she had "serious problems" regarding the privacy of users and that she wasn't alone.

Applications shared by Conley included a software tool that helps people change Facebook privacy settings using simple colour coding to demystify the process.