Recently Facebook announced changes being made to the privacy settings of its users. While these changes are designed to make things easier and simpler for its users is it more of a pain in the butt than helpful? You decide.

The default settings for the new privacy features will make all of your information available not only to the 350 million Facebook users as well as search engines such as Yahoo, Google and others.

Does this open up your account to even more danger in the form of hackers, scammers and other unscrupulous entities? I believe that it can, but you can do more to protect yourself by tweaking the following settings.

Search Settings

With the release of these new privacy settings all accounts were set to a default configuration. This configuration includes resetting your public search settings to the on mode. This setting means that you are allowing your information to be seen by any search engine. If you do not want your information to be available to anyone who wants to see it you need to reset the option to the off mode.

Hyper Control

It seems that with the new “privacy” features Facebook is actually removing some of your control over who can and cannot view your information. If you want to have more control over who can see updates, photos, etc all you have to do is go to the Privacy Settings > Profile section and you can decide who can see your information.

Friends List

While Facebook generally controls your friends list you do have some control you do have control over who can see it. If you want your friends list to remain private (as I do) all you have to do is click on your profile link at the top of the page, then look for a pen icon next to your friends list. When you click this icon simply remove the check mark in front of “Show Friends List to everyone.” Should you want to allow your Friends List to be seen by specific people you can enter their name in the box in this area as well.

Password Protection

One of the smartest things that rolled out with these privacy upgrades was the requirement to enter your password to make any privacy changes. This step would go a very long way to keeping your account safe and hackers on the run if it only worked as intended. It seems that though the system is in place it needs a bit of tweaking by face book.

While Facebook has rolled these changes out under the façade of “more secure privacy” in my opinion is that they have implemented these changes to give search engines more access to its members and thereby increasing their search engine revenue. Not only do these new privacy settings allow search engines to readily see your information they also open up your email address to spammers.

If you want your personal information to remain personal you need to adjust your settings to limit search engine access as much as possible.

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