Facebook has rolled out changes that will make it easier for Facebook users to understand and control their own privacy settings.
With immediate impact, Facebook is doing the following:
- Providing an easy-to-use "master" control that enables users to set who can see the content they share through Facebook. This enables users to choose, with just one click, the overall privacy level they're comfortable with for the content they share on Facebook. Of course, users can still use all of the granular controls we've always offered, if they want.
- Facebook is significantly reducing the amount of information that must be visible to everyone on Facebook. Facebook will no longer require that users' friends and connections are visible to everyone. Only Name, Profile Picture, Networks and Gender must be publicly available. Users can opt to make all other connections private.
- Facebook is also making it simpler to control whether other applications and websites access any user information.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg's blogged about this and Facebook has updated their Facebook Privacy Page.
