Facebook Changes Privacy Settings

Facebook is streamlining its complicated privacy controls to give its millions of members more control over what photos, comments and personal details they share with friends, family and strangers on Facebook and beyond, The USA Today reports.

Photo: Facebook Changes Privacy Settings

Chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said in his blog post on Wednesday that Facebook is in the process of simplifying and standardizing its privacy settings.

For Facebook users, this means revisiting previous privacy choices. Over the next few weeks, Facebook plans to make a Transition Tool available that will ask users to specify their desired level of information sharing. Previous privacy choices will carry over to the new privacy settings. Whether users will migrate toward more or less openness remains to be seen.

"We think Facebook is most useful when people can find and connect with each other, which is why this tool will enable you to make available those parts of your profile that you feel comfortable sharing in order to facilitate better connection," said Kelly. "You will have the choice of being as open or as limited in the sharing of this information as you want," InformationWeek reports.

``For example, you may want to make some posts available to everyone, while restricting others to your friends and family. You should be able to make that decision every time you share something on Facebook, and soon you'll be able to do this.''

Finally, you can choose, each time you post something, if this is something you want your coworkers, family or friends to see without having to mess around in the confusing privacy interface, MiamiHerald reports.