May 20th, 2010:

Are you terminally bewildered when you want to edit your Facebook privacy settings? Well the NY Times has proved that you are not alone, it turns out that there are more than 170 options [^]. And to make matters worse, not all of the options are where you would expect to find them!

All this makes it even harder for the users to be sure of what bits of “their” information Facebook is showing the world, or Google. Also in the article is a word count of the site’s privacy statement – from 1,004 words in 2005 to today’s 5,830. Does anyone read them all?

Good news, Wired have just reported that Facebook’s Head of Public Policy, Tim Sparapani, has announced that new “simplistic” privacy options [^] will be launched in coming weeks. Apparently this has came about as a result of the recent user backlash about privacy changes.

If you are fed-up with the treatment you get LifeHacker has a guide on how to set-up a minimalist Facebook profile [^]. Another option is the the reclaimprivacy.org [^] bookmark that scans your Facebook profile and shows you a summary of your privacy settings. The bookmark also displays links to the various settings, making changing them a lot easier.

Of course there is always the self destruct option of deleting your account!