Not to throw a bit of cool mist on the growing bonfire here, but..
You can make FB reasonably private by doing these things:
1. Go into your account menu dropdown, choose Privacy Settings, and then walking through each link to set their values to "Friends", the most restrictive setting.
2. Only friend people you actually know.
3. Only share information that you are comfortable with in the scenario of "accidental" publishing. Including photos, phone, address. It's OK to use FB in something like a "read-only" mode, keeping up on folks you know but not sharing much of anything. People often forget this.
3a. If you change your mind about something you've already shared, and want to delete it, you can... but FB (and Google, and the rest of the web) don't really remove your content, they just hide it sorta, kinda.
4. When you hear buzz about FB updating privacy settings, do step 1 again. FB's privacy updates generally are discovered by its users quickly, and while FB *does* err on the side of "you meant public, right??", as long as you do 2. and 3., you needn't worry all that much. Check every time you're worried, or every few months.
Now, as long as we're getting worried about online privacy, also add Google to that cauldron. Their former "Do no evil" mantra is long since superseded by "gather data in all cases".
h34r:
