When Facebook came up with new privacy settings, it took away the ability to hide some information that was not to be made public, like the Friends List.

The inability to hide the Friends List caused a bit of a hue and cry from a number of sectors, including business people who did not want to expose their professional networks to the public and their competitors.

It was also a concern to some parents who did not want their kids, or a list of their kids' friends, to be widely available.

Facebook was fast to react by announcing on its blog, a day later, that users can now uncheck the 'Show my friends on my profile' option in the Friends box on their profile so that it will not appear to the public. However, it was not very clear on exactly how to make the changes, as the checkbox is not in the Facebook privacy settings.

CBS News has given the following steps on how to make the changes:

1. Click on 'Profile' on the blue bar at the top of the screen.

2. Scroll down to the beginning of your Friends list and click on the pencil to the right of the word 'Friends'.

3. Uncheck the box that says 'Show Friend list to everyone'.

Though it will not hide your Facebook friends list from your friends when they look at your profile, unchecking the box will hide your friends list when a non-Facebook friend views your public profile. Also, this information will be available to applications and application developers.

In addition, this procedure does not hide other publicly available information including your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks you belong to, and pages you're a fan of.

Most Facebook users have by now gone through the mandatory privacy settings wizard, but you can revisit your settings at any time by hovering over settings in the tool bar on the top of the screen and selecting privacy settings.

If you don't do this, a fair amount of your information might be available to the public, including the names of your kids and other family members (with links to their Facebook accounts), your relationship status, and where you work.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh