By now, most Facebook users are aware by some means or another that the company has made changes to its privacy settings. Though these updates have largely been controversial, there are a handful of changes that are actually good and some that are at least neutral. They are also just different enough (but in a subtle way) to make our previous Facebook privacy guide a little outdated, so we thought we would go over some of the settings again to help our readers lock down their profiles as they please.

The good news: you can still divide up your friends into lists—as many or as few lists as you like! As we discussed in our previous privacy guide, the reason you want to do this is so you can divvy up permissions (which we will show you later), and you can do this by going to your Friends > All Friends > Create a new list.

Tweaking access: the new way

The idea is the same as before, but implementation is different. By going into Settings > Privacy Settings, you can control which types of people can see different kinds of information about you. Here's an example from the Profile Information page:

Here, you can set who can access information such as your interests, birthday, political views, family and relationships, education and work, photos of you, and more. The choices are usually Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, or Customize. The Customize screen allows you to specifically pick and choose your networks or friends who can see particular data; from here, you can specify any custom lists you have made. If you want, you can also specify specific friends, and block specific friends from that particular kind of update (can we say "no more Mom rooting around in your party photos"?).

Yes, much of this functionality is the same as before. The difference is the way it's presented from the main screen for each section—we feel that it lays out the options in a clearer manner than before and allows users to granularly tweak these settings without getting too lost in menu items.

Permissions on wall posts, one post at a time

The most significant change that Facebook made this month was the much-requested ability to determine permissions on a per-post basis. Previously, you had to set universal preferences for wall posts—either all your friends could see them, or none of them, or everyone, et cetera. Now, you can determine at each posting juncture whether you want everyone on earth to see it or just specific groups.

Just underneath the wall posting box is now a little lock icon that, when clicked, exposes your options. Again, you can elect to have a wall posting shown to everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends, just friends, or customized to individual friends and lists.

You can differentiate the posts you have "protected" (versus ones that are displayed to whatever your default settings are) by the little lock icon next to the post:

The post I made in the above screenshot was limited to a custom list that I made for the Ars staff, meaning that anyone else who goes to my Facebook page can't see it unless they're a member of that list.

What's missing?

There are a few things that are no longer part of Facebook's privacy settings that were there before. For one, regional networks are no more, and this is largely a good thing, as people could unknowingly share too much information with strangers within their city or state without realizing it. (The idea with your personal networks is that you know the people in them, and therefore you are less likely to accidentally share stuff with strangers.)

There's also no way to block your personal information from Facebook apps. The only way to avoid sharing your information with third-party app developers is to uninstall all applications.You can, however, control what your friends can share about you with third party developers by going to your Settings > Privacy Settings > What your friends can share about you > Edit Settings:

Another major element that's gone is the ability to manage multiple levels of permissions with regards to your friends list. This is because Facebook now considers your name, profile picture, city, gender, and friends "publicly available information," so anyone who finds you on Facebook can see who you associate with, even if you otherwise hide your info from nonfriends.

There is one catch to this—Facebook relented on the initial complaints about the friends list and has now enabled users to universally show or hide them. You can do this by going to your own profile and scrolling down to your friend list, then clicking on the little pencil icon. A menu will pop out with a number of options; one of them will be to show your friend list to everyone:

As the box says, your friends are always visible to your other friends, but if you are cavorting with enemies of the state or inside sources, random strangers won't be able to see your Facebook connections unless they friend you first.

Update: A reader has brought to our attention that it's still possible to access someone's hidden friends list through Facebook. All you have to do is look up someone's Facebook ID number and plug it into this URL where it says "USERID": www.facebook.com/ajax/typeahead_friends.php?u=USERID&__a=1

Conclusion

As usual, there are some shortcomings to Facebook's transition to a simpler privacy system. Some of them are major—the transition tool recommends that users share everything with everyone as part of its default settings—while others are less so. Despite this, the company at least seems to be trying to give users what they want, and a few good things have come out of it.

Of course, the company is happy to pat itself on the back for these changes. "Facebook's plan to provide users control over their privacy and how they share content is unprecedented in the Internet age. We have gone to great lengths to inform users about our platform changes," a Facebook spokesperson told Ars. "We’re pleased that so many users have already gone through the process of reviewing and updating their privacy settings and are impressed that so many have chosen to customize their settings, demonstrating the effectiveness of Facebook’s user empowerment and transparency efforts."

One thing we have learned from Facebook is that changes like these—especially as they pertain to user privacy—are always evolving. The company tends to keep an eye on how people are using the service and eventually makes tweaks to its offerings to better coincide with that. As a result, these latest changes may themselves be changed. Since they're here for time being, we may as well all learn how to use them.