Hundreds of thousands of Facebook users expressed outrage last week against a newly-added “news feed” feature, leading to an apology posted by its creator, Mark Zuckerberg. He acknowledged that the roll-out of the news feeds, which allow users to track friends’ activities from one central screen, had come with little notice and insufficient privacy controls.

Since then, more safeguards to students’ privacy have been added, and trumpeted to the Facebook community. Meanwhile, other changes have been made to the Web site — changes that, while less noticeable than the news feeds, could have much bigger privacy implications for its college student users.

With mid-term elections swiftly approaching, politicians are hunting down college student votes more than ever. They’re not stopping with the typical slew of commercials, posters, radio ads and bumper stickers, though: within days of the controversial news feeds’ debut, the social networking site also quietly introduced a component which allows politicians to buy profiles.

The change now gives politicians the same access as regular Facebook users, like the ability to message or “friend” students. As of Sunday night, 1,600 politicians up for election or re-election this November have registered on Facebook.

“By bringing politicians to Facebook, you can engage with candidates on your turf, in ways that are familiar and meaningful to you,” wrote Ezra Callahan, the Facebook elections project manager, on a Facebook blog about the project. And in an interview with Time magazine this July, Melanie Deitch, Facebook’s director of marketing, said that the site is charging all politicians equally, so as to “provide a level playing field for all candidates and causes to reach the 18-to-24-year-old demographic.”

Other social networking Web sites, including Newscorp-owned Myspace.com, are undergoing similar changes, with politicians attempting to woo younger voters with their own profiles.

Other recently-added features have enabled Facebook to give information to “developers,” a term that tells users little about who will actually have access to their data. Facebook’s terms-of-service page discloses that the site “may provide certain information about you to certain third parties (‘developers’) who have developed applications that use information from the www.facebook.com Web site.”

The third parties can access much of a user’s profile information. Excluded is contact information; included is “the total number of ‘pokes’ you have sent and/or received.”

This option, which requires that users check a box to approve the data disclosure, is enabled by default. Users can turn off data sharing under the “My Privacy” tab.

But it doesn’t take a vaguely-defined privacy clause for a user’s data to get into the hands of people who aren’t friends. University police departments nationwide have used it to crack down on crime, including underage drinking, and university administrators use it to screen candidates for jobs and awards. Similarly, prospective employers can use the site to quickly find out far more about a job applicant than a resume would suggest — although they can’t have their own profiles, so they often use those of alumni who now work for them.

Being solicited is not a new concept to college students, but, from the start, Facebook’s Zuckerberg has maintained that his Web site is a representation of university life.

“We don’t view the site as an online community — we bill it as a directory that is reinforcing a physical community,” he said in an interview with Current magazine. “What exists on the site is a mirror image of what exists in real life.”

SIDEBAR/PULL BOX:

To disable sharing your data with “developers,” click “My Privacy” and then “Edit settings” under the “Everyone” category.