Facebook enhances privacy settings

Facebook said it has 350 million users and half of them use regional networks

In a significant privacy shake-up, Facebook has announced it will remove regional networks and give users more control over their personal information.

Users of the popular social network will now be able to control who sees each individual piece of content that they upload.

This contrasts to current Facebook policy, which only allows users to create block settings, such as that which lets a user create a list of contacts that will not be able to see all of their wall content.

The social networking giant said that "networks" had formed the foundation of its privacy model but that now regional groups have grown too large to be a useful privacy organisational tool for users.

“If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in an open blog post.

“The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

“We're adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we'll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings."

Facebook advised users to review and update their privacy settings in the next couple of weeks.