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Cardiff solicitors Hugh James told BBC Radio Wales that the firm has pursued six defamation actions involving Facebook in the last nine months.

Allegations include libellous statements, fake profiles and doctored images. The firm also said that it was receiving calls every week from Internet users seeking legal advice about insults delivered over the social network. 

In July this year, a student was awarded £10,000 in libel damages at London's High Court after an aggrieved acquaintance posted allegations of paedophilia and an explicit photograph of a child on his profile.

In the same month, a New York judge made the distinction between defamation and bullying when she dismissed a teenage girl's defamation suit against five fellow members of a private Facebook group, who had posted claims within the group's profile suggesting she had contracted AIDS from, amongst others, a horse and a baboon. The case was thrown out on the grounds that the allegations were clearly not credible and the statements could 'only be read as puerile attempts by adolescents to outdo each other'.

Facebook considerably tightened its privacy settings in May this year, enabling users to determine exactly which areas of their profile are open to anyone outside their immediate group of friends.

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