Kate's Party not on, after all

What a shame.

What was shaping up to be Australasia's biggest ever party has turned out to be just a Facebook hoax.

The man behind the "Kate's Party" stunt, Adelaide prankster David Thorne, told news.com.au his latest prank to make waves in the digital world was aimed to highlight problems with Facebook's privacy settings.

Thorne last week created a hoax event listing on the social networking site that appeared to be a private birthday party for one "Kate Miller", this coming Saturday night.

The event was to take place at Miller's apartment and had, seemingly, been left open to 'public viewing' by accident, instead of set to 'private'.

Thorne also tweeted details of the fictional event to all his followers on Twitter.

More than 60,000 people RSVP'd to the event before it was taken down by Facebook, news.com.au reported.

Still, events - even fake, viral ones - have an enduring life on the internet. Tee-shirts saying "I attended Kate's party" are available to keen followers.

The hoax comes as US lawmakers are speaking to Facebook about concerns over changes in its privacy policy that would allow personal information to be viewed by more than friends.

Lawmakers are also looking into how other websites allow third parties to save information about Facebook users and friends.

- NZHERALD STAFF