Like most Facebook users, last week as I checked my Facebook page, up popped a message announcing some changes to Facebook’s privacy rules. And like most users I know, I just clicked on the Skip button and moved on to the interesting stuff.  But I won’t be able to skip for long.

Facebook announced last week yet another major change in the privacy options it offers users. And if you’re not paying attention, some of the changes might surprise you.

The idea behind the change is supposedly to give Facebook’s 350 million users more control over who sees the information they post. But what Facebook is also trying to do is open up their global community to more traffic (which means more business), and the best way to do that is to “encourage” users to expose more search-friendly personal information than they currently do.

According to Facebook’s new privacy policy, if you don’t select your own privacy settings Facebook will automatically do it for you, and to a standard that you might not be comfortable with.

For example, under current privacy settings people who are not friends can’t even see your marital status, gender, photo, or location. Under the new default settings, this information will now be open for everyone to see unless you go in and change your personal privacy settings.

Facebook’s own announcement confirms that “we’ll be recommending that you make available to everyone a limited set of information that helps people find and connect with you, information like “About Me” and where you work or go to school.

Unfortunately, even personal information like where you work or go to school is of real value to identity thieves who need this kind of information to spoof or clone your identity.

The Achilles heel in Facebook is the ease with which users accept new friends. For hackers and identity thieves, their goal is to hack or trick their way into as many circles of friends as possible. They know that for most Facebook users the best way to trick them into clicking on a malicious link is to make the user believe it’s from a friend.

For example, last week I visited a friend’s page on Facebook where I found nearly a dozen emails from a mutual friend who wanted to share with us an easy way to make money from Google. Of course it was a scam, and clicking on the link would download a nasty Trojan that could create havoc for an unwary user. That mutual friend probably had her Facebook account hacked by a scammer who then used the hijacked identity to target as many other users as possible.

And when it comes to privacy there’s always plenty to worry about. Last week I posted a note on my wall telling people that I just met up with my brother-in-law Andy, visiting from Ireland. It was the first time I ever mentioned any “Andy” in any forum. Yet two days later I received a spam email to an address that has never been associated with my Facebook account that opened with the subject line “Neal, have some bad news about Andy.” Coincidence?

But hackers don’t have to work very hard to break into your circle of friends. A study announced just last week by security firm Sophos found that more than 4 out of 10 Facebook users were willing to friend complete strangers – fictitious users invented by Sophos.

Once friended, the Sophos gate crashers were able to access a wealth of information including birthdates, email addresses, schools, and neighborhoods of most of the friends in the group.

There are some simple things you can do improve your privacy and reduce your exposure:

• Go to your Facebook privacy settings now and set them the way you want. It took me less than ten seconds to go through the new privacy protocol and tell Facebook that I wanted things to stay just as they were. You can find your privacy settings at the top of the page under the link Settings and you basically have three choices: only Friends can see selected information, Friends of Friends can see it too, or Everyone can see it. You can also mouse over the pencil symbols on your page to edit specific settings.

• Even with maximum privacy, it’s always wise to post as little personal information as possible. Facebook will always be vulnerable to hacks which means your personal data could be vulnerable, too.

• Don’t use Facebook to tell your family history, like mentioning the names of your grandparents and parents, where you went to school, your first pet and so on. As you probably know, these are the answers to the common secret questions that your bank may use to verify your identity.

• Resist the temptation to click on links in messages from friends, even if you know them. Hijacked accounts could easily lead to viruses and Trojans.

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