New Privacy Controls on Facebook to hide Updates from Unwanted Audience

Has it ever happened to you that you got into trouble or an embarrassing situation when someone who was not meant to read an update or a remark on your Facebook profile, read it? Well, it has happened to me and trust me, you don’t want to be in a spot like that EVER.

Well, here is a piece of good news for all those who had a similar experience in the past, as I did. Now, more privacy controls are making their way to Facebook, allowing 200 million users to choose who all should see their personal updates.

New & Improved Privacy Controls

Facebook has been testing new privacy controls on the social networking site that will enable users to customize their postings for specific groups of friends. Yesterday, Facebook launched a beta version of an improved Publisher with new Privacy Controls.

Publisher is the main place where you post your photos, videos, and status updates on your home page and profile.

According to Facebook’s blog post:

“The new Publisher Privacy Control gives you the opportunity to answer the question, “Who do you want to tell?” as easily as you answer the question, “What’s on your mind?… You may have some posts you want to share with a wide audience, such as whom you voted for or how great the weather is today. Other times you may have more personal updates like your new phone number or an invitation to join you at your favorite restaurant for dinner that are meant for only close or nearby friends… If you have access to this beta version, every time you publish content into your stream you are able to control which people can access that specific piece of content.”

Beta Access – Limited

For now, the additional privacy controls are only available to a select number of Facebook users.

In case you are amongst the few with access to this beta version, then upon publishing content on Facebook, you will have control over who accesses that piece of update.

How does it work?

• Write a status, upload a photo or create content from the Publisher on Facebook.
• Use the lock icon in the lower-right corner of the Publisher to access the drop-down menu.
• From the menu, choose the people you’d like make the post visible to.

Simple!

Options available:

• Everyone: This means anyone, be it a Facebook user or not, can view the content.
• Friends and Networks: Only confirmed people who you added as friends and others in your network will have access to the content.
• Friends of Friends: Anyone who is friends with a friend of yours can see it.
• Friends: Only people you have confirmed as friends can see it.
• Custom: You could choose anyone from your Friends List allowing them to view the content.

You could create a photo album and restrict certain friends from viewing it and those people will never see that photo album in their stream. You could even talk about a crazy night of partying with your college friends, at the same time keep your family on Facebook at bay… Yay! 😀

Share your comments on what you think about the new controls and do let us know if you are amongst the select few with access to this beta version.

Link: Publisher