Facebook Attempts To Make Privacy Controls Easier

DENVER (CBS4) - In an effort to turn the world's largest social network into a more discreet place, Facebook is trying to make its privacy controls easier to find and understand.

Facebook says it's making changes to help users.

Saying it's hard to maintain some sense of privacy for more than one billion customers is an understatement. But that's exactly what Facebook is trying to do. For the first time in 15 months Facebook is revising privacy shortcut settings as well as a few other things.

The biggest change will be a new "Privacy Shortcuts" section that will appear as a small lock on the right-hand side at the top of the page. The feature offers a drop-down box where users will be able to get answers to common questions such as, "Who can see my stuff?"

Some of the other new privacy shortcuts include:

- A new icon on the toolbar which will allow users to access other questions such as, "Who can contact me?" And, "How do I stop someone from bothering me?"

- Facebook will remind users while a post may be hidden from their timeline, it will still appear in news feeds, searches and other places.

- Many times Facebook users are tagged by strangers. With the new option Facebook will allow users to select multiple photos and then un-tag.

The new tools and changes will be rolled out in a few weeks and all one billion-plus Facebook users will be notified about the changes.