Facebook initially underestimated how many of its users will react the various changes made in its privacy policies. The aggressive reaction made by concerned users apparently caused the company to rethink those rolled out policies.

Facebook said it would give its users simple controls to determine whether their information was visible to only friends, friends of friends, or everyone on the Internet. Those settings will be applied retroactively to everything users have already published on Facebook.

In addition, Facebook said it was changing its directory of users to show only minimal information when people search for others, like name, profile picture and gender. It had earlier required users to make more information public.

Lesson learned here is that a significant portion of the online population care about what happens to the information they share online, and who should see those information. More and more people are realizing how easy personal data could be made accessible to the wrong audience.