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It sounds harmless and quite idyllic. In the online game Farmville, players plant strawberries and trees, milk cows and build farm buildings. Farmville is open to members of the social network Facebook and has developed in record time into a mass phenomenon.

Just under 75 million virtual farmers from all over the world make up Farmville’s membership and that figure is rising.

However, not everything is rosy in the world of Farmville and German data protectionists are warning against attempts by the game’s owners to gather information on players. Some of Farmville’s players have also reported unauthorized withdrawals from their bank accounts.

The American Internet firm Zynga is behind Farmville and says it was amazed at how quickly the quirky game took off. It first went online in June 2009 and was expected to have five million users by year’s end, according to company founder Marc Pincus.

Social network-based games such as Farmville are experiencing a boom at the moment. Zynga also offers a game called Fishville that allows you to build your own aquarium, Petville for pet lovers, Cafe World where you can practice your hosting skills and Mafia Wars, where you can indulge in the crime underworld.

Zynga’s competitor Playfish offers a similar palette of games, such as Gangster City, Pet Society and Country Story. Last November computer game developer Electronic Arts took over Playfish, forking out $275 million for the takeover plus an additional $25 million for other assets. EA has also committed to paying another $100 million if certain conditions are met by Playfish.

The virtual world of online gaming is a source of money in the real world. In Farmville, for example, players can earn experience points and online money for free through diligence that allows them to buy seeds and farm animals.

To do that the farmer must regularly check his fields or else crops will die. Popular and sought-after game elements such as barns and houses can be obtained faster if you lodge real money into a Farmville account by credit card or PayPal.

Although most players only pay small sums, it all adds up to a tidy sum for Zynga. According to its own figures, Zynga has managed to attract over 230 million players. The New York Times estimates that translates into annual earnings of about $250 million.

Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian Internet investment group, has interests in Facebook and recently bought $180 million worth of Zynga. Malicious tongues said DST made the move as it was attracted to Zynga’s Mafia Wars game. The total market for virtual games is estimated to be a billion dollars in the United States alone. Some experts say it could be as much as $5 billion by 2013, while right now in Asia, the market is already at about that figure.

Critics have raised concerns that not everything is conducted in an orderly fashion in the world of online gaming. There have been suggestions that Zynga’s partners have engaged in dubious business practices. They offered Farmville users money in exchange for purchases of software and mobile phone ringtones.

One of Zynga’s critics is the technology blog TechCrunch. The blog’s founder Michael Arrington thought Farmville’s money-for-software deal was a subscription trap and created the term “ScamVille” to describe it. Zynga called a halt to the practice but in the meantime, a class action suit is working its way through US courts.

Another aspect of concern is data protection. If you join Farmville, you automatically allow Zynga access to your profile, photos and information about friends. “The privacy policy is very unclear and Zynga reserves the right to gain access to just about everything,” says Henry Krasemann, who works for Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein, an independent data protection body in Germany.

The company’s Web site explains that Zynga creates profiles on its users that are made up of information from several sources such as “newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant message services, Zynga games and other users of Zynga.”

Together with information provided by the user’s browser as to what sites he or she has visited, Zynga uses that data to create targeted advertisements.

Based on German law, that is a gray area, possibly even improper, according to Krasemann. Zynga’s policy of storing data on users permanently has also raised issues of concern for German data protectionists.

Anna Tschochner, a 25-year-old from Munich, was a busy and hardworking farmer in the beginning. Many of her Facebook friends joined Farmville, thanks in part to her Facebook page, which was littered with status and activity updates from Zynga. Tschochner thought it was a pleasant way of passing the time.

Then Zynga withdrew money from her PayPal account on three occasions, although she never gave the company permission to do so. Tschochner has now warned her Facebook friends.

She received her money back but her enthusiasm for Farmville has withered on the vine. DPA