In an open letter to the Facebook community its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced upcoming changes to Facebook privacy settings.
The main reason for the privacy changes is connected to the incredible growth of the social networking website.
According to Marc Zuckerberg, the current privacy model of Facebook relies on networks which can be communities, companies and even regions.
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 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 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 be shared with at the time.