Facebook recently (in December, 2009) unveiled a radically revamped
set of privacy controls. They are better and more forward-thinking than
its previous efforts, but Facebook made one very important change in
late 2009: almost all user data is now made public by default.
Facebook users were asked to verify their privacy settings using
Facebook's "Privacy transition tool" that recommended some default
settings. Oddly, the suggested defaults made most profile settings,
photo uploads, status updates and application settings viewable by
everyone on the internet. This means the whole world could see
everything Facebook users post if they didn't change the defaults.
For more details on these privacy changes, see the Electronic
Frontier Foundation's overview.
The most invasive part of the policy for most people will be the
public search results settings. This means if they post something and
later decide they want to switch to a private profile, those
embarrassing posts will remain in search engine indexes.
The good news is that Facebook actually now offers more
fine-grained controls over which bits of personal information you share
than ever before. The bad news is that the high level of control makes
preserving your privacy a fairly complex process. There isn't a simple
check box that says "make my profile private."
But fear not, we've got you covered. Follow these instructions
below.