We do want privacy: half of Facebook users have customised their privacy settings

Facebook released some stats on how users have adapted to the new privacy environment on the site, introduced at the beginning of December.

There were worries that people wouldn’t bother to customise their privacy settings and would just let Facebook’s new public-by-default policy sweep them into public view by accident. But it looks like people do care about their privacy. 33% of Facebook’s 350million monthly users did respond to the privacy message Facebook sent out and changed their privacy settings.

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Add on to that 10 -20% of users who had already customised their privacy settings before the changes set in and you have an optimistic assessment that about half of all Facebook users have customised their privacy.

The December privacy changes reset the defaults on all profiles to public. The changes also made some information automatically public: friend lists for example. See inside facebook explanation here.

[via Inside Facebook]

Anna Leach