Facebook Rolling Out Simplified Privacy Settings

Facebook kicked off a security upgrade to its site Wednesday that is intended to streamline users' control over their privacy settings.

"When we add new features to Facebook, we usually include a corresponding privacy setting," Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly wrote in a blog post. "While this has helped give some people more individualized controls over particular features, [it] has made controlling privacy on Facebook too complicated."

To simplify, Facebook launched a test with a limited group of U.S.-based users, who will try out a system that allows them to adjust their privacy settings all on one page.

Right now, when users access their privacy settings, they can click on profile, search, news feed and wall, or applications and adjust their settings separately. Once the upgrade is complete, all four categories will be listed and adjustable from one page.

Facebook will also incorporate several changes they've announced over the past several weeks: allowing users to select privacy preferences for the publisher; the end of regional networks; and allowing people to select "everyone" when designating who can see their profile.

When the formal switch happens, users will be presented with a "transition tool" that outlines their privacy settings, and gives the option to make a profile more open, limited, or the same.






"We've designed the transition tool to respect previous decisions to limit access to information," Kelly wrote. "If you have selected settings that restrict who has access to information, those choices are carried over to the new privacy settings."

At the outset, a test group of 40,000 users in the U.S. will have access to the simpler privacy settings and receive one of six transition tools. That test will later expand to 80,000 users globally. Finally, Facebook will compile feedback to select the most popular of the six transition tools, and start a slow rollout to all of its users of the new settings.

Facebook insisted that the changes do not affect the way it provides information to advertisers.

"Facebook does not share personal information with advertisers except under the direction and control of a user," Kelly wrote. "These new tools do not alter that policy or practice."

Facebook put up a slideshow that features screenshots of the expected changes.