BRITISH PLOD are using the online social network Facebook to assist them in their enquiries.

Greater Manchester Police created an application on Facebook that solicits investigative tips from visitors, provides a real-time police blotter news feed and offers surveillance videos and other police force news and advisories.

Police agencies routinely gather information about various persons of interest from online social networking services, but this is the first attempt at making interactive use of Facebook by UK law enforcement authorities.

A "Submit Intelligence" link in the application leads to a police website where the user can grass up someone anonymously.

However, Facebook developer applications make all of their users' information available to the application owners and this has raised privacy concerns where the application is owned by police authorities.