According to the latest blog post from Facebook, new privacy policy tweaks will be rolling out soon(probably during the f8 conference next month). Some of the changes include ‘location’ from where a post is made and connections to other people’s profiles via groups or fan pages.

The change that stands out the most is the one involving third part websites and applications. Here is what facebook describes this policy :

Today, when you use applications such as games on Facebook.com or choose to connect to Facebook on sites across the web, you are able to find and interact with your friends. These applications require a small set of basic information about you in order to provide a relevant experience.After feedback from many of you, we announced in August that we were moving toward a model that gives you clearer controls over what data is shared with applications and websites when you choose to use them.

In the proposed privacy policy, we’ve also explained the possibility of working with some partner websites that we pre-approve to offer a more personalized experience at the moment you visit the site. In such instances, we would only introduce this feature with a small, select group of partners and we would also offer new controls.

So, this pretty much suggests that in case you have not made changes to your profile and it is open for view for anyone – which is by the way the default option- then all your information will be available to any third party website facebook wants. Facebook’s privacy policy DOES suggest that you will be able to opt-out of these changes ‘entirely’ but it is  not the default option How convenient is that. Furthermore, there is yet no information as to which third party sites in particular will be granted access to the user data which is also a big concern with these new privacy policy tweaks.

If you are a Facebook user then you better be careful about what to put in your general information area. Because your “General Information’ will be shared with sites you never signed up for. Here’s the Facebook’s definition for ‘General Information’ :

The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. We may also make information about the location of your computer or access device and your age available to applications and websites in order to help them implement appropriate security measures and control the distribution of age-appropriate content.