Facebook is today’s hippest and most happening social networking site. Many avid users of MySpace, Friendsters and other social networking sites have transferred their accounts to the said site since it entered frame. One of the site’s biggest come on are the games – like Farmville (which so many people are addicted to), Mafia Wars and Fish World to name a few. Other features that make it a hit are the applications, events invites and fan pages – companies, celebrities and even politicians nowadays are capitalizing on this feature to increase their popularity. Ultimately, the site’s privacy settings made me decide to join the bandwagon and create an account with them as well.

Later on, I found myself surprised that I was able to actually view profiles and pictures of people who are technically strangers to me, but are somehow linked to me via common friends. It appears that if a friend of yours is tagged in an album of someone, regardless if they are in your network or not, you are still able to access their albums to see the pictures of your common friend. This to me is rather disconcerting.

I guess a lot of users have alerted Facebook about the situation I’ve mentioned. Thankfully, they came up with a way to enable its users to protect themselves – their all new Privacy settings. With the new Facebook privacy settings, you can fully control who sees your profile and what they see. Yesterday, I tried to tinker some of its features, I exempted 2 of my friends from seeing selected photo albums in my profile, not that I don’t like them or hold a grudge against them, but simply because they are related to my ex. What really amazed me is that I am capable of actually viewing my profile as how it would appear to these 2 people. Brilliant! With that I give Facebook a 2 thumbs-up for their new privacy settings.

***photo taken from the internet