How the new Facebook privacy settings affect you as a Web searcher (and how you can change them)

Last week, Facebook changed their privacy settings so that anything you "like" is visible to everyone else in your particular Facebook ecosystem; in other words, if you like a song on Pandora, that like will show up in your Facebook stream so that everyone you are friends with will be able to see it. Basically, your privacy settings aren't that different, but the data that you interact with is displayed differently, so your Web searches and Web activities are now potentially visible to everyone under the Facebook umbrella.

You can change your Facebook settings so that your Web searches and Web activities are not automatically included in your Facebook stream, and there are two ways that you can accomplish this:

• Site by site: You'll see a toolbar or notification of some kind on sites that have partnered with Facebook to collate information; you can choose whether you'd like to go ahead and "personalize your experience" or not.
• From Facebook: Go to Account-->Privacy Settings-->Applications and Websites-->Instant Personalization-->Edit Setting. Once you get to "Edit Setting", there's a checkbox that personalizes Facebook by default; uncheck that box and you've officially changed your Facebook privacy settings so your Web activities are now private.

More about Facebook

• Three easy ways to search for people on Facebook
• How to Unblock Facebook