A Look at the 2010 Facebook Privacy Changes

Facebook has always been a balance of usefulness and invasion of privacy. This is a world where everyone immediately knows your changes in relationship status, your mood and personality based on apps, and what you look like and do based on your pictures. Sounds great, right? But then again kind of creepy. Most people with Facebook tend to have way more 'friends' than people who they are actually close to. Distant relatives, people you vaguely know, and occasionally the random stalker all want to friend you and chances are you're too nice to say no. Well after some lawsuits because of invasion of privacy, Facebook has decided to institute new controls that people can use if they choose to control what people viewing their Facebook page really see. Let's take a look at these changes so you can know if you should be updating your page right now to protect yourself or not.

1. You can hide your 'Friends' List.

This protects you from unwittingly revealing the people who are closest to you to people searching you on Google. Now you can keep people from knowing who your friends are if you choose. You can learn a lot about a person from the friends he has, so maybe that's a good thing if you're trying to get a job and your friends are a bit wild. Most employers now check out a potential employee on Facebook before hiring them.

2. Most of the settings will remain on "everyone" but can be changed.

Since Facebook operates on the assumption that you want to share things with people around the world, the default setting for privacy on Facebook will be for everyone to be able to see everything. Changing things is going to be made easy, though, with little tabs that let users switch "everyone" to "just friends" or a custom setting of who you want to remain in the loop and who you're excluding.

3. Applications can be blocked

This won't be fun news for the companies producing applications, but now Facebook users can choose to completely block all applications for a more simple version of the Facebook experience. No more requests to water plants on your friends' farms. It is probably a good choice for older users who aren't really interested in sending gifts, checking people's personality results, or feeding their fish when they are doing their social networking.

4. You can hide your interests and personal info.

Don't want everyone in the world to know that you love crocheting little animals late at night? Well that's fine. Make it prime knowledge that only your very close friends can access. Don't be ashamed. More people do it than you think.

5. You don't have to do anything if you don't want to.

Facebook has made a big point of letting everyone know that these changes can be opted out of by anyone not interested. If you're fine with how things are then the good news is you have nothing to do. No annoying message telling you to update your privacy. It is a new feature that has been added without making a big hubbub.

The new Facebook changes are not as big of a deal as some news stations have suggested. It's a nice thing that Facebook is offering for everyone, but don't think that it will ultimately change your Facebook experience unless you want it to.