Yesterday, Facebook announced an awesome new feature that lets anyone see your current city, hometown, education, work, likes, and interests, even if you’ve set your profile to private. Will this benefit individual users and their friends? Not unless the only thing you remember about your dear friend is that they enjoy leather-play and you’re willing to scroll through reams of headshots to find them. No, this new privacy erosion is for the real clients of Facebook: advertisers, and the data-mining minions that toil on their behalf. However, there are two ways to be totally private.

The first is to change your age to under 18. Then your interests can only be seen by friends and family and verified networks, as per Facebook’s policy for minors. Whoops, actually, you would have had to make your age under 18 when you signed up for Facebook. Tough noogies, they gotcha!

The second is to delete your profile (here’s how) and get off Facebook. The best safeguard of your online personal information is to never put it there in the first place.

Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information [EFF]
Connecting to Everything You Care About [The Facebook Blog]

RELATED: Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.