Facebook has its new privacy settings in effect from December 9, 2009. Now, Facebook users who don’t have their privacy settings adjusted would start publishing their photos and status updates to the whole internet. This is as per the changes made by Facebook aiming at simplifying its privacy tools to keep up with the popularity of sites like Twitter.

The public posting becomes default in Facebook. Currently, people who use Facebook would see a ‘transition tool’ soon after they log in. This would show them the way their old privacy settings map onto the new ones and also give them suggested new settings in an uncomplicated interface. For instance, Facebook provide the users with suggestions like to make e-mail addresses visible only to friends and status updates public.

According to the new settings, a user’s name, gender, profile photo and friend list are publicly available. With the new settings, for the photo shared or each individual update on their profile, the user can choose who could see them. Options for this could be friends, a college network, friends of friends, a customized friends list, or everyone on the internet.

But the new recommended default for postings is everyone. At present, results from your own social network are only being brought up through Facebook search. When more data is made public on Facebook, it opens up more opportunities for Facebook search. It would also lead to more scopes for outside search engines in the future.

Facebook estimates that the majority percent of its users have fixed with the default privacy settings. The previous status update defaults were ‘Friends of Friends’ and networks and, photos defaulted to everyone. The company says that the changes do not affect the way users’ data would be accessed by third party Facebook apps.