Facebook Makes Major Privacy Changes - East Idaho News
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Facebook Makes Major Privacy Changes

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Getty 013012 FacebookLogo?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1355346680653Peter Foley/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Facebook users know the unfortunate drill. In an effort to block a friend or a list of friends from seeing your tagged images or even just limit someone from seeing a Timeline post, you go looking for the correct privacy settings. Ten minutes later — no exaggeration for many — you’re lucky if you’ve pinpointed the correct settings area, never mind having made the change.

Facebook’s privacy setting menus have been like a maze — you’ve never know where to go and it’s easy to get lost. But Facebook is finally attempting to change that. The social network is announcing Wednesday a series of changes to its privacy controls. They will start rolling those out to all Facebook users before the end of the month.

One of the biggest changes is to the discoverability of the privacy control menu. No longer do you have to go to a small, buried menu setting to find the privacy setting menu. Now there will be a privacy shortcuts menu with a small lock icon added right to the upper right hand corner of every Facebook page. Click on that and you will see a larger box with simple to understand privacy options, including “Who can see my stuff?” and “Who can contact me?”

“This new menu has the key settings that are the most relevant and important to people. The idea is that privacy follows you around on Facebook,” Nicky Jackson Colaco, Facebook manager of privacy & safety, told ABC News. “We want it to feel like something that is with you all the time,” Colaco added. Right from the shortcuts menu you can also now easily search the Facebook Privacy help center.

Colaco said Facebook is trying to get rid of the fine print throughout the site. Navigation has been improved on the left side to make it easier to find settings

Facebook plans to release the new settings to users before the end of the year on the Facebook website – they won’t be coming to mobile applications just yet.

“Privacy is something we never stop thinking about,” Colaco said. “We will keep iterating and improve where we can.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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