Today saw a long-awaited change to the Facebook default privacy settings. For a long time users’ status updates were set to ‘Public’ visibility by default, with users having to adjust their privacy settings to restrict them to only their friends or to custom groups going forward.
However, some five years after the Facebook default sharing setting for new users was set to Public, the social network has finally reacted to user sentiment by changing this. Anyone joining Facebook from now on will have their posts automatically set to ‘Friends’. New users will also see a reminder when they make their first post that they can change the default privacy settings.
For all current users, it might be worth double-checking the visibility of your current settings just to make sure you’re not unintentionally sharing your posts with a wider audience than intended. To do this, simply click in the text box where you’d go to write a status, and then click on the drop-down to view/edit the settings:
Here at SocialSafe we believe that sharing is a wonderful thing, but we also recognise that everyone has a right to privacy. We do our best to keep you up to date with any changes to the privacy settings of the major social networks that our backup application supports, but if you have any hot tips or discover any privacy flaws on these social networks that might result in people over-sharing, then please feel free to let us know and we’ll help spread the word.