June 11, 2014

After facing a barrage of criticism in the past for its ambiguous and faulty privacy settings, social networking giant Facebook has finally come up with some changes that could go down well with the users. Certain changes have been made to the existing privacy settings, while some new features have also been brought in; so that users can customize the set of people they want their posts to reach out to. The new settings will come into implementation for all new accounts that are created on Facebook. For the existing users, the new privacy settings will be rolled out over a period of time.

Following are the latest additions to Facebook privacy settings.

  • Up until now, any new user who joined Facebook had all of his or her posts set to public. This meant that any new photos or status updates posted by the user could be seen by anyone who had a Facebook account. In order to allow people to be more selective when it comes to whom they share their posts with, Facebook has now changed the default settings to ‘friends’. Any posts made by a new Facebook user would now only reach out to his or her friends, unless some changes are made to the settings. This is a huge relief for users who are wary of sharing their updates with anyone and everyone on Facebook.
  • For their first post, the new users will be greeted with a reminder on whether they want to set their audience to public or to friends. If no choice is made by the user, settings automatically go to ‘friends’.
  • That was the story for new users. Coming down to existing users who have been part of the Facebook network from the past, the company has decided to expand its existing ‘privacy check-up’ tool. This tool allows users to see their current privacy settings. If they are inclined to make any changes to it, they can always do that through the pop-up that appears on the screen.
  •  There is good news for Facebook mobile users as well. The social networking giant has made changes to privacy settings for its mobile application as well. Users can now share status updates with the groups that they intend to; this will become more transparent a process now as the user can see exactly who is going to see those updates. This will be visible on the top-left corner of the screen.

The new privacy settings are definitely going to make users feel more comfortable and secure as they go about posting updates and pictures from their lives on Facebook.