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If you are into Facebook, I think you seldom read the changes on their privacy policy.

Facebook is making big changes to its privacy settings that may mean millions of people begin to expose information that they previously considered to be restricted to only their Facebook friends to the entire internet.

According to Facebook definition of terms, "Information set to 'everyone' is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet."

Also, "The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to 'everyone.'

Facebook is aiming to get people to be more public on the site and that anyone who hasn’t changed their privacy settings will now see it “recommended” that their status updates, photos etc. be exposed to “everyone” – to the entire internet.

If you make your information available to “everyone”, it actually means “everyone, forever”.

You are free, of course, to change that setting.

If you’ve never edited your privacy settings before, Facebook will set the new default on the “transition” page to share all your posted content with everyone.

Only 15 to 20% of Facebook users have ever changed their privacy settings before, so 80 to 85% of people will now be switched by “recommendation” to share their content with the whole web.

There’s a real danger that people will go along with Facebook’s recommendations without considering carefully the possible consequences.

eBay topped the most trusted company in terms of privacy according to a recent study. Facebook stole the spotlight by securing the 10th place.

The two-part study from Ponemon Institute and Truste – both privacy specialists, surveyed more than 6,000 U.S. consumers. The latest survey mostly reflects which companies were seems to have the best privacy practices based on consumer brand perception and doesn’t necessarily translate to the most trustworthy companies.

Top 10 Most Trusted Companies In Privacy

1. ebay
2. Verizon
3. US Postal Service
4. WebMD
5. IBM
6. Procter & Gamble
7. Nationwide
8. Intuit
9. Yahoo
10. Facebook

This is the first time a social network company – Facebook, to break the top 10 list. Facebook had been on the privacy blunders in the past but because of  the new privacy features that Facebook has offered, they were able to convinced the panel of judges to give the company a top spot on the “trusted list”. Some of the features added recently is the include friend list and increased control over public listings.

Among the criteria that were used in assessing the level of trustworthiness is whether a company:

• has a clear readability and easy to find privacy statement
• provides adequate access to account information
• uses cookies and discloses that to users
• shares data with other companies and affiliates
• has a data retention policy
• has a chief privacy officer
• whether they disclose a user’s e-mail during password reset
• and whether they use Web beacons.

What companies do you trust to guard your privacy?

Facebook mobile users is now at 65 million.  This is almost one-third of the total population of Facebook which is around 200 million already.

The recent growth is due to the mobile service which Facebook started in 2006. Facebook’s mobile web site m.facebook.com works on any mobile browser. It has  x.facebook.com also which is designed specifically for touch screen phones like Android, Palm, iPhone and Nokia.

Facebook introduced a new feature called ‘Facebook Connect’. It is a system wherein a developer can integrate with Facebook for their own services. This will also provide the users a single log-ins for all Facebook services.

Mobile access is becoming increasingly important for Facebook in order to expand globally. Currently, the best mobile interfaces are found on iPhone and Blackberry. Facebook recently launch Facebook for iPhone 3.0 and people have been very pleased with the new features.

Nokia is also gearing on the same direction.  Nokia just announced a new handset, the N900, which uses a Linux-based operating system called “Maemo.”  This new gadget will have a Facebook application that allows users to update their location with their status.