Not just rigorously; easily studied, and checked. I haven't seen a single response here that says something along the lines of: 'Hey, I just did exactly the same as they reported the woman doing in the article, and she's right!' but instead, plenty of FOAF-type anecdotes about sort-of similar things. So, has nobody here bothered to check because they all trust news10.com as an impeccable source of technology news?

Easier to just monitor network traffic.

I think that if Facebook was caught doing this after they specifically denied it, then executives would probably be going to jail.

I think if Facebook say they aren't doing this, then they aren't doing it.

Even IF this was true, do you really think the executives on their meetings go like: "Okay, if we deny this, we will go to jail. So let's tell everyone that we are spying on them!"

No. Denying is the only smart move here.

Just to be clear, are you positing that Facebook is actually doing what the article accuses it of doing?