Facebook implementing 'privacy checkup' for users sharing publicly

Facebook is attempting to change its image of dismissing user privacy. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Facebook is to roll out a 'privacy checkup' service to make sure users know when they are publicly sharing data.

It is just one of a number of changes Facebook is making to improve its privacy settings after carrying out surveys about privacy with 4,000 people a day across 27 languages.

Facebook's privacy checkup will make sure those still sharing things publicly realise that their data is available to anyone. Photograph: Facebook

The company admitted that it had failed to properly educate users about how Facebook goes about protecting user privacy, including when friends onwardly share your restricted posts which are then limited to just your mutual friends.

'Some people have felt Facebook privacy has changed too much in the past, or we haven't communicated as well as we could have,' said Facebook's privacy product manager, Michael Nowak, at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

'Now we're thinking about privacy not just as a set of controls or settings, but as a set of experiences that help people feel comfortable,' he said.

Privacy first, now

Facebook is attempting to change its public privacy-forsaking image fuelled by early stances taken by its founder Mark Zuckerberg, who said in 2010 that privacy was no longer a social norm.

The social network has changed the way it approaches user privacy. Two dedicated privacy teams now handle settings and security across the whole of Facebook, rather than each product team handling it individually.

Facebook's privacy engineering manager Raylene Yung said that the social network is taking data privacy very seriously. It performs 80 trillion checks on its systems every day to prevent data leaks and make sure that user posts are only shown to those the user selects.

Changes coming

Facebook is also changing the way users choose who their posts will be shown by moving the 'audience selector' to the top left of its iPhone app, and giving it more prominence so users can switch between posts that are 'public' and 'just for friends' more easily.

The audience selector for new posts will be given more prominence in the Facebook iPhone app as well as on the desktop. Photograph: Facebook

The audience selector on the desktop version of Facebook will also be simplified by making the two most popular choices of Public and Friends more prominent, with other choices available via a drop-down menu.

Facebook has had a torrid history of constantly changing privacy settings, which it hopes to avoid, promising that it heavily researches privacy changes, however minor, before making them for its 1.2 billion users.

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