Facebook privacy changes

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed Facebook users via an open letter today, and announced a few changes aimed at improving the privacy settings and allow users more control over personal information.

The first step was to nix the regional networks. “Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around ‘networks’,” says Zuckerberg. “However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy.”

With the removal of these networks, the choice between who can see inside your account will be the following: your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone. Up until now, if you didn’t change your privacy settings, your profile information was available to any person inside your network by default.

The second change is “the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload”. Also, the privacy settings page will be made simpler.

Since privacy has been a big issue for Facebook, they plan to ask each and every user to update their privacy settings.