The Facebook Blog

This Friday is Data Privacy Day, an international effort by governments, businesses and advocacy groups to raise awareness about the importance of staying in control of personal information. A key part of controlling information has always been protecting it from security threats like viruses, malware and hackers.

That's why we've developed a number of complex systems that operate behind the scenes to keep you secure on Facebook. In addition, we've created some advanced features you can use to help protect yourself even more, such as remote... logout and one-time passwords. These features are especially useful when you're uncertain whether your network or computer is secure. Today, we're announcing two new such features.  

Over 200 million people use Facebook on their mobile phones to share photos, access applications and stay connected with friends. In October, we added a dashboard to give you a way to clearly see and control the ways applications use your information. Today, we're making these same controls available on your mobile phone so you can update and manage the information you share from wherever you want.

In addition to your current privacy controls on mobile, now you can see a detailed view of the information you've shared with various... applications and websites and adjust your settings on the go. A full list of all the applications you use, along with when they last accessed your information, is now available in the Applications and Websites section of your privacy settings.

You are in control of how you connect and share on Facebook. Recently, many of you said you wanted more streamlined controls, so we made a number of changes to provide them. As of today, you can use these controls no matter where you are, what kind of device you have access to, or when you want to make a decision about your information.

All of Facebook's privacy controls are now available from any browser-enabled mobile device to the more than 500 million people, like you, who are using Facebook in every country around the world. Few online... services offer any privacy controls to their mobile users. None that we know of offer the same control as the desktop version.

As mobile devices have become more sophisticated and widespread, we've noticed that people are creating content and accessing Facebook at every moment of the day, in many locations—not just from desktops.

Wherever you are connecting and sharing through Facebook, you should be able to make real time decisions over your information. Now you can.

You can get to privacy controls on mobile by going to m.facebook.com/privacy or by going to the Settings page and clicking the "Change" link next to the words "Privacy Settings." Check it out for yourself to:

• Select who can see the content you post by setting the simple control for sharing on Facebook to friends, friends of friends or everyone,


• Fully customize your granular settings, if you want, and have them take effect instantly, and


• Read through our comprehensive privacy guide, formatted for mobile devices.

Privacy controls on m.facebook.com

We're rolling out the settings right now. If they aren't live for you yet, check again soon.

We hope you think having anywhere access to your privacy controls is helpful. We'd love to know what you think; share your feedback at www.facebook.com/privacyfeedback.


Michael, Facebook's mobile product manager, is letting everyone see his photos of the Morcheeba show last week.

At Facebook, everything we do is about making the world more social and creating more personalized experiences. On Facebook, people do everything from remembering their friends' birthdays to reuniting with old classmates to even finding people willing to donate their organs to save their lives. We think making the world more personal and social is having a profound impact on the way we relate to the people, communities and institutions around us.

In a more connected world, advertisers are social too. This gives you the chance to connect to... the companies and brands you like and learn more about their products and services. We believe that more personalized social advertising complements the ways that people use Facebook every day—to discover, share and connect with the people and the world around them.

We recently launched simplified privacy settings in response to feedback that certain Facebook settings had become too complicated. We hope that most of you have had a chance to check them out and find the ones that are right for you as you share and connect with your friends and people around you.

As we rolled out the new settings, we asked you to share feedback about them and ask questions about how privacy works on Facebook. Many of you did, and we wanted to share the answers to some of your most common questions.

We're also continuing our "...Learn More" video series that offers tutorials on Facebook privacy settings. Today, we've launched the third video. Watch it to learn more about the controls for applications and websites:

Sharing and connecting are at the core of how Facebook works, and people share more when they understand what they're sharing and know how to control their experience on Facebook. That's one of the reasons we recently began rolling out simplified privacy controls, which are now available to the majority of people on Facebook.

To help you make the best decision about which settings are right for you, we're continuing to launch more resources to help you understand your privacy options on Facebook. Remember, your privacy settings themselves have... not changed with this update; we've simply added ways to control what you share with fewer steps.

Today, we've launched a new Facebook and Privacy Page to complement the privacy guide we previously revamped on the site and a series of video tutorials we started publishing last week.

The Facebook and Privacy Page serves as a living resource and a venue to facilitate an interactive discussion about privacy with all of you. We'll regularly post updates on relevant new content, products and news stories related to online privacy. Already you'll find a repository of online privacy resources both from Facebook and outside experts, including our video tutorials on how to choose your settings as well as links to our privacy guide and FAQs.

Going forward, we'll be posting updates about new materials we create, tips on how to control your sharing and links to relevant news stories and viewpoints.

We encourage you to like the Page to receive those ongoing updates in your News Feed. We also want to hear from you on the Page, so please provide feedback by commenting on our posts to let us know your thoughts on privacy or to provide suggestions on developing the Page.

Along with the new Page, we've introduced our second video in the "Learn More" series. This newest video offers a step-by-step guide to the new controls for sharing on your privacy settings page:



We'll be launching even more videos, so be sure to like our official Facebook Page or the new Facebook and Privacy Page to be updated when they are available.

As always, we want to hear your feedback. Let us know about your questions, suggestions, and experiences at http://www.facebook.com/privacyfeedback. We'll be answering some of your most common questions in future posts on this blog.


Simon, a manager on Facebook's public policy team, is sharing privacy tips on the new Facebook and Privacy Page.

As you may have seen here earlier in the week, we announced simplified privacy controls in response to your feedback. These new settings are continuing to roll-out and they should be live to everyone in a week or so.

Learn About the New Settings
To help you use the new features and learn more about controlling your information on Facebook, we are launching a series of video tutorials on our official Facebook Page and other places on the site.

...The first video went live today and provides an overview of how privacy controls work on Facebook. You can watch it below or on our official page. To stay updated on future videos, be sure to like our page and you'll see new videos as we post them.



Remember, your privacy settings themselves have not changed but we encourage you to learn more about the simplified controls and give them a try. If you have questions or other feedback the new controls or generally about privacy on Facebook, please let us know at http://www.facebook.com/privacyfeedback.

Caitlin, on the marketing team, is mastering the art of voice-dubbing.

When we started Facebook, we built it around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. When you have control over what you share, you want to share more. When you share more, the world becomes more open and connected.

Today, I want to share some thoughts on how we've evolved to this point, what we're doing now to give you more control, and what you can expect from us going forward.

Looking back, the first version of Facebook was very simple. There were almost no features. There were... no status updates, photo albums or messages. There was no News Feed or Platform. The only people who could use it were college students in the United States.

The way the site worked was that everyone could see some basic information about you and the rest of your information was only visible to people in your networks and your friends by default.

As the site grew and as we rolled out new features, Facebook became less about colleges and more about sharing lots of content with different groups of people. So a little more than a year ago, we started working on a new privacy model to reflect how the site had evolved.

As News Feed became more central to your experience, we added privacy settings so you could control who could see each individual status update, photo album, video and everything else you share into the stream.

As Platform became more popular, we restricted the way applications could access your personal information. Now all applications and websites can only see content that is already visible to everyone. They must get permission to access anything else.

As regional networks grew to include more and more people, we decided to phase them out since they were too big for you to effectively control your information. While this was not a big issue in the United States, more than 50 percent of you worldwide were in networks that spanned whole countries like India and Turkey.

Replacing regional networks meant we needed a new model for control. In general, we recommended that you share basic info like status updates and posts with everyone, content like photos and videos of you with friends of your friends, and sensitive items like contact information with only your real friends. We asked each of you to look at your settings and choose what you wanted.

More recently, we also launched community pages and other ways to give you personalized and social experiences on other sites you use.

Since then, you have sent us lots of feedback. We've listened carefully in order to figure out the best next steps. We recognize that we made a lot of changes, so we really wanted to take the time to understand your feedback and make sure we address your concerns.

The number one thing we've heard is that there just needs to be a simpler way to control your information. We've always offered a lot of controls, but if you find them too hard to use then you won't feel like you have control. Unless you feel in control, then you won't be comfortable sharing and our service will be less useful for you. We agree we need to improve this.

Today we're starting to roll out some changes that will make all of these controls a lot simpler. We've focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications.

On Saturday, we concluded the notice and comment process for our latest set of proposed changes to Facebook's governing documents. This was the fifth time we've previewed new policies and asked for feedback since we adopted this framework early last year. I'm pleased to report that during the latest week-long process, we received more than 4,000 comments from people around the world, including users, regulators, and online privacy advocates.

As we announced at the opening of the period, these latest proposed revisions to our Privacy Policy... and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR) were designed to make way for some exciting new products we're contemplating. Because not all of these products have been finalized and many aren't yet built at all, we'll be able to use your comments to help influence our product development.

In addition to taking your feedback into account as our product teams and engineers are designing and coding, we wanted to respond to some of the common comments.

For example, some of you commented, in connection with the proposed new Privacy Policy, that you'd like to be able to hide your Friends List. In fact, this is something that people already have the ability to do. We announced this feature back in December, and you can read more about it in our Help Center.

Others had questions about the sections in the SRR requiring people to provide accurate information and limiting them to one account. These are not new requirements. Facebook has always been based on a real-name culture, and we feel strongly that these policies provide greater accountability and a safer and more trusted environment across the site.

Still others asked to be opted-out of having their information shared with advertisers. This reflects a common misconception about advertising on Facebook. We don't share your information with advertisers unless you tell us to (e.g. to get a sample, hear more, or enter a contest). Any assertion to the contrary is false. Period. Instead, we enable advertisers to target anonymized demographics and attributes. That is, a company selling boats can target people between 40 and 50 years old who expressed an interest in boating. However, we never provide the advertiser any names or other information about the people who are shown, or even who click on, the ads.

We also received questions about the proposed new language in the Privacy Policy relating to our plans to work with some pre-approved partner websites to offer a personalized experience when you arrive at these sites. Based on your comments, we think it's important to clarify a couple of points, even though this program has not yet been launched or even finalized.

First, it's important to underscore that this will be a test with a handful of carefully selected partners to provide express personalization on their sites. These partners will be pre-selected, reviewed, and bound by contracts with Facebook – much like other partners we have worked with in other contexts to deliver unique and innovative experiences. For example, we're working with Yahoo! to integrate Facebook across their properties, AOL to integrate our chat with AIM, and we first partnered with CNN.com to make their broadcast of the Presidential Inauguration more social with the launch of the Facebook live stream application.

In addition, partners who participate in this test will be required to provide an easy and prominent method for you to opt out directly from their website and delete your data if you do opt out. There will also be new features on Facebook.com to help you control your experience when you visit these sites.

In sum, the core idea behind this test is to work with partners to enable them to present you with a better, more relevant, and tailored experience when you visit their sites. While we have not finalized these features or partnerships, we think this is an exciting opportunity to make surfing the web a smoother and more engaging experience for people who use Facebook.

We're committed to building products that advance what's possible for people who want more personalized and social experiences on the Web. We're equally committed to evolving our products and technologies in a way that respects the trust you have put into Facebook.

As always, thanks for participating in our open governance process and sharing your feedback with us. We expect the new documents to be live on the site in the coming days. Stay tuned for future updates by becoming a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page.


Barry is a director on Facebook's communications and public policy team.

Nearly a year ago, we committed to an open and transparent system of governance for Facebook. Specifically, we now post all proposed changes to our governing documents before they go into effect and solicit feedback on these proposals from the people who use Facebook. Since we started this unique process—in fact, we think we're the only major online service that does this—we've gone through several successful rounds of changes, and your comments have been invaluable to the process.

All web services occasionally have to change their governing... documents to accommodate new products. They just may not tell you about these changes, much less give you advance notice. Today, we're giving you that notice and beginning the process of listening to your feedback.

We're proposing another set of revisions to our Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to make way for some exciting new products we're contemplating. Not all of these products have been finalized and many aren't yet built at all. However, we've definitely identified some interesting opportunities to improve the way you share and connect with the people and things in your life.

So, today, we explain some of these policy changes, and sometime soon—when we're done designing and coding—we'll have more product details to announce. It is important to note that, while we're still developing many aspects of these products, user control over privacy remains essential to our innovation process and we'll continue to develop new tools to help you control the things you share on Facebook.

As always, we encourage you to review the newest proposed changes in their entirety and provide your own thoughts on the Facebook Site Governance Page.

Here are some of the biggest updates, a few of which are simply clarifications or further explanations of things that already happen today:

Facebook is designed to give you control over the information you share, and today we're making available some of our most recent privacy controls to applications on Facebook and websites and services using Facebook Connect.

Last December, we launched a control that many of you had requested for some time—the ability to customize privacy for each piece of content you share on Facebook.com through the Publisher, including status updates, links, photos and videos. Today, we are responding to your continued feedback by extending that same level of... control to content shared through applications.

There are now granular privacy options that enable you to personalize the audience for each piece of content you share through applications. Simply select the group of people you want to share with from the drop-down menu near the lock icon on the Publisher on your home page or profile, or the prompts that appear when you share from applications or Facebook Connect websites.

For example, maybe you don't want all of your friends to see the humorous greeting card you just posted from an application. Now you can set that post to be viewable only by certain friends.


Alternatively, there are some posts you may want to share with the broadest audience possible, such as information on an important organization you're supporting in the Causes application.


These new controls give you the power to determine who sees the content you post to Facebook through any third-party application, whether it is on Facebook.com, your desktop, mobile phone, or from a Facebook Connect website or service. Seesmic, a desktop application from which you can view and update your News Feed, will soon offer extended privacy options so you can specify audiences for each update you make from the application, such as uploaded photos and status updates.

Applications on Facebook.com and external websites and services using Facebook Connect implementations have always respected your privacy based on what you've set in the "Posts by Me" setting on your Privacy Settings page. This setting will continue to be your default setting for all posts, and you can change it at any time.

You may also start to see additional prompts in applications asking if you'd like to set privacy for certain pieces of content that differ from your default setting. Whether you choose to keep your default setting on everything you share or change the audience for different pieces of content, the choice is yours.

We look forward to continuing to provide tools that give you more control over your information. Please keep your comments and suggestions coming.


Ray, an engineer on the Facebook Platform team, is sharing a Someecard that is not safe for mom.

Today is Data Privacy Day, an international collaboration by governments, privacy professionals, academic institutions, businesses and nonprofits to raise awareness about data privacy and the protection of personal information. For Facebook, privacy is a core component of the products and features we build every day. It is critical that we give the more than 350 million people on Facebook the power to share what they want with whom they want while safeguarding their privacy.

To commemorate this day, we invited experts to share their perspectives... on the meaning of privacy in the digital age and offer advice for managing it online.


Alex Türk
Chairman, French Data Protection Commission

Barton

Curtis

Stearns

Cavoukian

Doyle

Balkam

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we've built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook's current privacy model revolves... around "networks" — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We're adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we'll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we'll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You'll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you're finished, we'll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you're done you'll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We've worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone's needs are different. We'll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you're sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.


Mark Zuckerberg

On Nov. 5, we wrapped up a week-long notice and comment period for a proposed revision to our privacy policy. This was a continuation of our ongoing effort to run Facebook in an open and transparent way. The goals of the revised policy were to make it more accessible and easier to understand.

We've spent the last week reviewing each and every one of your comments. While a lot of people participated, the total number of people commenting did not reach the threshold of 7,000 that makes a vote necessary according to our Statement of Rights and... Responsibilities. Because of this — and the fact that many of the comments were positive — we've decided to adopt the revised policy. We'll be posting it in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish soon.

In the coming weeks and months, we plan to build on the progress we've already made in making the document more accessible by also adding definitions of key terms, screen shots of important pages and informational "learn more" videos. We think these visual resources will make it even easier to understand how privacy works on Facebook.

We received excellent feedback from many of you over the course of the week, and the number of fans for the Facebook Site Governance Page more than doubled. Overall, you supported the proposed changes. For example:

In October, we called attention to National Crime Prevention Month in the United States to raise awareness about cyberbullying. This week is National Anti-Bullying Week in the United Kingdom, and we've teamed up with media outlets BBC Radio 1, BBC 1Xtra, and other sites like Bebo, Habbo, MSN, MySpace and YouTube to address this important issue again. While only a small fraction of people will ever experience abusive behavior on Facebook, we're committed to promoting an environment where everyone can connect and share comfortably.

For more... information on how to handle bullies, check out the BBC's new Facebook Page and website. You can show your support for the "bullyproof" movement and receive a free badge to post on your Wall or send to a friend.

We want to ensure that people understand how to address cyberbullying if it occurs on Facebook, so here are some useful tips from our Help Center:

Accept Friend Requests from People You Know
In order to prevent harassment from strangers, be careful to accept friend requests only from people you know in real life and remember to report any messages or profiles that look suspicious. Facebook is based on a real-name culture, and fake profiles are regularly disabled when they're reported to us. Only confirmed friends can post to your Wall or contact you via Facebook Chat, so if you're worried that someone will make inappropriate posts or send offensive messages, just ignore that person's friend request.

Use the Block Feature
A block prevents specific people from viewing your profile. When you use this feature, any ties you currently have with them will be broken, and they won't be able to contact you through Facebook. You can block another user by listing his or her name in the "Block People" box at the bottom of your Privacy Settings page.

Report Abusive Behavior
The most efficient way to report abuse is to do it in the same place it occurs on Facebook. For example, if you receive a harassing message in your Inbox from someone who is not your Facebook friend, you can report it by clicking on the "Report" link next to the sender's name as you are reading the message. If you receive an harassing message from a Facebook friend, you should remove that person as a friend and report the message. Reporting a message will automatically add the sender to your Block list. You can also use the "Report/Block person" link that appears at the bottom of the abusive user's profile. Reports are confidential and the user being reported does not know about the report. After a report is submitted, we will investigate the issue and make a determination as to whether or not the content should remain on the site based on our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Customize Your Privacy Settings
Facebook offers granular privacy settings that allow you to customize what information you share and with whom. By customizing the settings on the Privacy Settings page, you can control who views your information, dictate who can find you in searches, and see your Wall, profile and photos, among other things.

Respond to Abusers in the Right Way
Cyberbullies often seek a reaction from the people they harass. When they fail to get one, they often will give up. Rather than respond to a bully via an Inbox message, a Wall post or Facebook Chat, you can delete offensive posts from your Wall or messages from your Inbox and then use the Block or Report functions to resolve the issue. To delete an offensive Wall post, select the "Remove" button that appears in the upper right-hand corner. To delete a message from Inbox, simply click the "Delete" button at the top of the message. Only confirmed friends can post to your Wall or send you a message through Chat. If you are receiving posts and Chat messages you don't like, you should consider removing the sender from your friends list.

Protecting our users is a top priority for Facebook, and we're proud to be a part of this year's Anti-Bullying Week efforts in the UK.


Richard, Facebook's European Director of Public Policy, is a fan of the BBC bullyproof Page on Facebook.

This week something great happened: two of my former students connected with me on Facebook. Three years ago, I taught writing at a small college in New Hampshire, and the new friend requests reminded me of how great it is to see what your former students are up to years later, as well as how difficult it can be to be a teacher.

Teachers work with an audience that is by definition impressionable. This means that being a teacher comes with the added responsibility of also being a public figure. As with most jobs, the extra-curricular life of a... teacher has professional consequences, which is especially important on Facebook where people are more connected and sharing more often.

Some teachers stay away from Facebook altogether, while others — like some of my friends — have found creative workarounds such as only accepting friend requests from students who've graduated or those who are over the age of 18. However, it doesn't have to be that difficult. In fact, it is useful and rewarding to connect with your students on Facebook. So, in honor of all the people who are heading back to school this month, here are some tips for using Facebook.

Create Friend Lists
You can sort your friends into lists, without them even knowing it. For instance, if you're a teacher, you can create a Friend List called "students" and adjust your privacy settings to control what people in that list see. You then could allow students to see basic information about you and maybe your photo albums from a recent trip you took, but not photos in which you've been tagged.

You can create a named list to organize your relationships in whichever way works best for you: close friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, students, among others. Just select the "Create a List" link on the left-hand side of the home page or create a new list from your Friends Page. Each time you receive a friend request, you'll have the option to add that person to the appropriate list as you accept them.

By using the Friend Lists you've created, you also can filter your home page to get updates from the people you're interested in. If you're a teacher, you can see what your students are sharing on the site by filtering for that group from the left-hand side of the page. If one group is most important to you, you can even set it as the default view for your home page by dragging it to the top of the left hand bar.

Check Your Privacy Settings
Don't be afraid to severely restrict what certain people can see. For instance, if you're a teacher, you may not invite a student to a dinner party with friends, and the same goes for your boss or other people you don't interact with in those types of social settings. You should use your Facebook privacy settings to reflect the types of relationships you have.

Once you've created your Friend Lists, you can use them to customize privacy levels for different information and content you include on your Profile. Select the "Settings" link located on the top menu bar and navigate to the Profile section of your Privacy page. From there, you can select "Edit Custom Settings," which will open a field for "Except These People." Adding a friend or Friend List here will exclude those people from seeing the information in question about you.

For example, maybe you want your close friends to see your favorite activities and your contact information so they can reach you easily, but you don't want your students to see those sections of your profile. You can exclude your "students" list from seeing the "Personal Information" and specific "Contact Information" sections of your profile.



We hope these suggestions can not only help students and teachers connect, but help all of you share with even more people in your lives.


Jesse, a training and communications lead, is a teacher here at Facebook.

This morning, we announced plans to give you more control over your information and to help you make more informed choices about privacy. We'll be making a series of improvements that include notifications and information about privacy settings and practices, additions to Facebook's privacy policy, and technical changes designed to give people more transparency and control over the information they provide to third-party applications.

These planned changes are a result of collaborative discussions we've had with the Office of the Privacy... Commissioner of Canada, which has spent more than a year reviewing Facebook's privacy policies and controls. You can read more about their announcement here. If you are a developer, you can read more about the potential impact for applications here.

The improvements we announced today are in addition to the tests we began in July of simpler privacy settings and tools for migrating people to the new controls. Those tests continue and we hope to roll them out to more of you in the coming months.

Giving people more control over what information they share and with whom is at the heart of how we think about privacy at Facebook. As people better understand how information is shared and gain more control over it, they become more comfortable and confident in sharing—whether it be photos of a vacation or a status update about how they're feeling today. As we complete these improvements in the coming months, we'll continue to share more details with you.


Tim Sparapani is director of public policy at Facebook.

When we added regional networks to the site back in 2005, they provided a useful way for people to find and connect with the people around them. We've grown substantially since then, and today these networks too often represent large geographical areas—sometimes entire countries—that no longer accurately reflect people's real-world connections.

To make the site easier to understand, we're taking the first step towards removing these regional networks, which you may have joined for your city, region or country. When this process is finished,... regional networks will no longer appear in your privacy settings. We think this will make the privacy options and controls we offer even clearer. You'll still be able to share content with larger groups of people by choosing the new "Everyone" option or by using a school or work network.



Already, we've started removing regional networks as filters in News Feed. We found that few people were using the regional network filters, choosing filters for their schools, workplaces and Friend Lists instead to surface interesting and relevant information.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be removing other uses for regional networks. If you've ever created a group or event and set it so that only members of a certain regional network could join, that group or event will now become open to everyone. If you're a group or event administrator, we'll notify you through a message at the top of the group or event page so you can change the access level if you want.

For the 50 percent or so of people who have joined regional networks, we'll eventually be moving information about those networks to your profile so that you can still tell people where you live. If your regional network is a city, for example, it will be listed in the "Current City" field. If it's a region or country, it will be listed in a new "Current Region" field. This information will continue to appear in search results so that it's just as easy as before to find the people you know.

We're glad that so many of you around the world have made Facebook a part of your lives, and we hope this change improves your experience on the site.


Paul McDonald, an engineer, is saying goodbye to the Silicon Valley network.

One of the top priorities at Facebook is offering privacy controls that let you choose exactly what you share with whom. We have largely focused on enabling you to give access to your profile to people you confirmed as friends and people in your networks. While these controls remain important and a priority for us, many of you have explained that you also want to open parts of your profile to a wider audience. Starting today, you can choose to make your profile and any of your content available to everyone on Facebook.

None of your existing... privacy settings have changed. This is an additional setting for those of you who wish to share with a broader audience.

Just go to your privacy page and change the settings you want to the new "Everyone" option. You can opt to make one or all of the following profile elements more open: Profile, Status Updates, Links, Wall Posts, Basic Info, Personal Info, Education Info, Work Info, Photos of You and Videos of You.



By changing your Profile setting to "Everyone", anyone who finds you through a search on Facebook or sees a post or comment you make can now click on your content and view the elements of your profile you've opted to make open. While some special rules remain in place about who can see your profile if you are a minor, people generally won't need to be friends with you or share a common network in order to view your content if you choose the new "Everyone" setting.

In the past, searching for friends you haven't seen in a while or someone who has a common name may have been difficult. You may have only been able to see their search listing and a small thumbnail version of a photo, if that. With this change, people can use the "Everyone" option and make it easier for you to find and connect to all the people you know.


Mark Slee, an engineer at Facebook, can't wait to see what everyone thinks.