Facebook Privacy Changes Announced

Mark Zuckerberg announced upcoming changes to Facebook's privacy settings in an open letter to the Facebook community.

The main reason for the privacy change is connected to the incredible growth of the social networking website according to Zuckerberg.

Facebook's current privacy system relies heavily on networks, communities, companies or regions, and that is just not cutting it anymore.

And it is the regions that made Facebook reconsider the privacy settings as some regional networks have grown to 1 million and more members which made the all or no-one approach unfeasible (in regards to posting messages on a network).

More than 50% of all Facebook users are part of a regional network, and the upcoming changes will give them - and everyone else - more control over the data that they share.

The result is that regional networks are removed from the privacy controls completely, and replaced by a simpler model which basically allows users to share content with friends, friends of friends or the public (everyone.

This will go along with an overhaul of the Facebook privacy page. Some settings will be combined on that page making it easier for users to control their privacy.

Facebook users will be notified in the next couple of weeks about the changes. The notification will ask them to review and update their privacy settings to reflect the changes of the update.

Update: you can check out Facebook's current privacy settings on https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=privacy

There you can control the three core privacy groups on Facebook that deal with the visibility of your data, who can contact you, and who can look you up on the site.

The core visibility options are

1. Only Me -- indicating that only you can view these posts or information.
2. Friends -- Only your direct friends can see the information.
3. Friends of Friends -- Your friends, and their friends (which you may not be friends with), can see the information.
4. Everyone -- The information is accessible publicly.

The page lists current information right on the page so that you can see on first glance if a setting needs to be revised or is configured correctly.

Another interesting option that you have on the page is to browse the activity log which displays posts and things you are tagged in, and to limit past posts to share those posts only with friends instead of other groups that they may have been shared with at the time.

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