Facebook Privacy Settings Changes Start To Go Live

Facebook has rolled out the first wave of privacy changes that it has had planned for awhile now. Users in New Zealand are seeing new notifications and menus that are part of the changes. According to a spokesperson who talked with The Next Web, other Facebook users will begin seeing the changes over the course of the next week as the social network wraps up its testing.

These privacy changes are being implemented to give Facebook users an easy way to access and control their level of privacy on the social network. Among the changes is the addition of a "Privacy Settings and Tools" page that shows an easy-to-scroll through listing of the various opt-out and privacy settings that are currently a tad harder to find and setup.

For now, users see such items as "Account Settings," "Privacy Settings," and "Log Out" when clicking on the menu arrow on the top of the screen. When the changes go live, users will instead see a picture of a lock where the arrow is currently located. Upon clicking it, a list of privacy shortcuts are displayed with simple items, such as "Who can contact me?" and "Who can see my stuff?"

The upcoming change will present the easiest-to-setup privacy options to date on the social network, which has been criticized for its often convoluted and hard to manage privacy settings. A Facebook spokesperson told The Next Web, "We're testing the new tools in some specific countries right now and we will be rolling them out to additional countries over the next week."

[via TNW]